America's Favorite Cake Maker Buddy Valastro Installs $100,000 ELAN g! Home Control System to Automate Every Aspect of His New House

America’s favorite cake maker, Buddy Valastro of Carlo’s Bakery, can control and automate every aspect of his $1.3 million, 7,000 square foot New Jersey home, right from his iPhone with the ELAN g! Home Control System.

When Valastro moved in 2010, he didn’t know much about home automation. He had a new music distribution system installed, but that was it. Two days after closing on the house, he was introduced to Chima Gale, owner of 360 Media Innovations, who showed him how the ELAN g! IP-based Home Control System could make his life, and his home, simpler to manage. After a short demo at the set of Valastro’s television show, Gale had him hooked. Now, they have just completed a $100,000 ELAN g! installation that lets Valastro control every aspect of his home from around the globe.

“In today’s world, if you don’t embrace new technology, you get left behind,” Valastro said. “I use state-of-the-art appliances in my kitchens, but had never spent much time thinking about other parts of the house. So I said to myself, ‘I want a space-age house. I want to turn off all the lights with one button before I go to bed, and I want music playing when I walk into the kitchen in the morning.’ The best thing about this system is it took no time at all to learn to use it. My family knows how to use an iPad and an iPhone, so the software feels just like any other app we use on a daily basis. Having all the systems – the heating, lighting, music, and alarms – adjust themselves throughout the day has made everyday life simpler for me and my family.”

And the system doesn’t just turn lights and music on and off. Valastro’s house is fully integrated, so he now has total mobile control over the home’s 68 light switches, four-zone HVAC system, security and surveillance system with 24 cameras, whole-house audio system with 42 ELAN Elios speakers in 17 discrete zones including the master bathroom and three-car garage, and he can even control the pool equipment.

The system is so extensive, you can hardly turn a corner in the house without seeing a touch screen control panel. There are 12 TS7 touch screens that double as digital picture frames, two TS2 touch pads, 4 On-Screen Displays (OSD) on TVs throughout the house, three new iPod touches and two new iPads in addition to the six iPads the family already owned. As if that were not enough, there is a vanishing-mirror TV above the sink in the master bathroom.

“Nobody can deny that the adoption of home control is growing by leaps and bounds, and the home is quickly becoming an extension of our digital lives,” said Gale. “The ability to help someone go from a simple dedicated music distribution system to a full-fledged home control system, accessible from anywhere in the world, is what makes today so exciting for the industry. The fact is that everyone wants home control. With the ELAN g! Home Control System, everyone can have it.”

In fact, Valastro’s appreciation for the ELAN g! Control System will soon extend beyond the home, as he and Gale later this year integrate the g! System throughout Valastro’s brand-new 35,000 square foot command center, a high-volume bakery production facility in Jersey City, New Jersey.

The ELAN g! Control System provides users with the most uniform and intuitive icon-based control from their favorite devices, including TVs, touch screens, touch pads, PCs, iPhones, and iPads. The standardized interface works across platforms, so that the trendy g!Mobile app users love on the iPhone appears and works similarly on ELAN touch screens, valets and handheld remotes as well as users' televisions and mobile devices. And the system's IP backbone makes it just as easy to control the system from across the room as across the globe.

Carlo’s is a family owned bakery that produces what many say are the best tasting, highest quality wedding cakes, specialty cakes and baked goods in New Jersey. Carlo’s, originally opened by Carlo Guastaffero in 1910, was acquired by Bartolo Valastro Sr. in 1964. Since the untimely passing of Bartolo Sr. in 1994, matriarch Mary Valastro, along with her daughters, Grace, Maddalena, Mary, and Lisa, her son, master baker Bartolo Jr. “Buddy” Valastro, and their spouses have maintained the business. The Valastro’s and their experienced bakers and staff have expanded Bartolo Sr.’s dream and have seen it flourish.  The bakery is located in the heart of Hoboken, New Jersey.