It’s easy to dismiss wearable technology as a trendy buzz term—something that AV integrators will discuss but never really be involved in providing to clients.
Doing so, however, would potentially leave money on the table and mean missing an opportunity to solve an evolving need that AV integrators and consultants are uniquely equipped to deliver. That’s according to a couple of panelists during a CI Summit session on “Hot Technologies and Applications” moderated by Innovad and AV Nation’s Tim Albright.
Companies want to put tags on employees and to use the data to make decisions about their office strategies, said consultant AV Helpdesk’s Chris Neto. Information can be used to track when people are in the office and how frequently rooms are used.
From an integration perspective it can be viewed as negative if that information is used to make decisions of downsizing space or streamlining technology, but that may ignore the bigger picture. “As an industry we are the only ones who could ever talk to HVAC, lighting control and make sense of that,” Neto said.
“We’re smarter than we think we are. We’re the only people who can put a box in that our industry makes that talk to these things.”
Meanwhile, customers are increasingly focused on technology that, well, is just there and doesn’t require touching, according to Steve Greenblatt of programming house Control Concepts. “The conversations are moving toward having less buttons on a touchpanel, less interaction with something that you’re actually touching and more of being a presence and having technology think a bit more for you,” he said.
“So wearables are your way of identifying your place in the environment.”
Watch Greenblatt discuss challenges involved with demand for wearable technology integration:
