A Smart Home is a Warm Home

A Smart Home is a Warm Home

From smart phones to smart homes and everything in between, we live in a technological era where progressive and enterprise technologies enable us to live more efficiently and with the environment in mind. With a desire to help educate the local community about ways to save power as well as feature some of the latest technologies available for residential homes Waipa Networks have taken the initiative to create a new website called Virtual Smart Home.

Waipa Networks commissioned Hanson Creative to create, build and implement the website, with the brief to make it as interactive as possible.

Kerry Watson, Customer Services Manager commented “Waipa Networks wanted to provide ready access to the latest in smart home technologies for its customers. Limited displays are available in some of the main centres however the travel distance and the possibility of the displays becoming quickly out of date are a hindrance to our customers experiencing these new and innovative technologies.”

“We therefore developed the concept of a ‘virtual’ smart home on the internet where customers could easily access the technology and interact with it. The concept also allows frequent updates with the latest technology at minimal cost.”

Hanson Creative pulled in the specialist 3D team at Urban Voyage to create the photo realistic renders of the smarthome. Once the look, camera angles and all elements had been wireframed the rendering process began. Following the finalisation of the visuals, the Hanson Creative team started to add all the animation and interactive elements required to engage the user as they moved through the house. The whole site is built using Adobe's Flash technology and has been carefully compressed to load as quickly as possible. Small animations were added so when users rollover “hotspots”, they highlight key technologies in the home.

Hanson Creative's Director Lee Hanson said "it has been a fantastic project to work on, as it has been at times, technically difficult, but we are very happy with the end result. The site has been designed to be developed over time so any feedback from the community would be gratefully received."

Kerry went on to comment “we see this as an exciting beginning to our project and one which will allow us the flexibility to regularly and easily update the content.”

“The smart home website goes beyond a typical demonstration of smart technology by also providing users with tips regarding energy safety and efficiency. We believe the website is an asset to our customers and the public at large and look forward to building on its success to date.”

If you would like to visit the new website and check out how you can save, reduce or purchase power saving technology for your home then checkout http://www.virtualsmarthome.co.nz

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