Cake Boss Buddy Valastro Brings Down The House At CEDIA 2011 Birthday Celebration for the ELAN g! Entertainment and Control System

America’s favorite baker and television’s unchallenged Cake Boss, Buddy Valastro, brought down the house last week at CEDIA 2011 when he personally delivered a custom designed birthday cake to The AVC Group exhibit to help ELAN® Home Systems celebrate the first birthday of its revolutionary g! entertainment and control system.

Nearly a thousand show attendees followed Buddy as he accompanied his confectionary replica of the ELAN HR2 handheld remote controller from the exhibit hall loading dock to The AVC Group booth. Once there, fans mobbed Buddy, and the cake, to take pictures with their cameras and smartphones. “I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like this at a CEDIA Show before,” said Paul Starkey, President of ELAN Home Systems, “at least not in my history of attending this show. I don’t think anyone will ever forget it!”

Indeed, Buddy Valastro was also taken back by the emotional reaction of the show attendees, many of whom surged around the stage and, for a time, overwhelmed it! “I’ve always wanted to attend this show,” he told the assembled audience. “I love all of this technology and I appreciate all of the benefits it brings to people of all ages, particularly the ELAN g! System. The g! system has transformed the way my family lives at home and it has revolutionized the way I run the business at our new Carlos Bakery commercial production center in Jersey City, New Jersey. I always tell people that if I can operate g! anyone can operate g! It’s so intuitive and easy to master.”

Amplifying Buddy’s message, Starkey noted that, “In one short year, the ELAN g! System has established itself as the benchmark for entertainment and control quality, reliability, user-friendliness, ease of installation and profitability that our competitors can only dream of matching. It provides dealers with precisely the kind of entertainment and control system they need to succeed in today’s economy — a profitable and easy-to-install system that scales the waterfront from single-room entry level to whole home mega-mansion installations.”

ELAN also chose the occasion of its first birthday celebration at CEDIA 2011 to strengthen the g! product line with the market introduction of an expanded series of home controllers, the latest Version 5.2 software, and a 10” touch screen.

Celebrity Baker Buddy Valastro Installs ELAN® g! Control System in New 35,000 Square Foot Commercial Production Center

America’s favorite baker, celebrity chef, and television star Buddy Valastro is taking his world famous brand to the next level with the opening of Carlo’s Bakery Lackawanna, a new, custom designed state-of-the-art 35,000 square foot bakery production center in Jersey City, New Jersey.  The facility is certain to be an employee’s dream, offering Buddy’s staff of professionals brand new appliances and equipment, and giving them full control of their environment through an ELAN® g! Control System installed by 360 Media Innovations.

With up to 100 employees at a time designing, baking, and building custom confections from $2 cupcakes and cookies to $20,000 life-sized designer cakes, there are sure to be different personalities and tastes. That’s why the facility utilizes the ELAN g! Control System to control 65 speakers distributed across 11 audio zones, allowing employees to choose what music plays in their area from two Sirius satellite radio receivers, two AM/FM radio receivers and four iPod docks.

“I work hard, but I also love what I do,” Valastro said today. “And I want our entire working family to enjoy their work, too.  Giving them a cool way to listen to whatever type of music they like will help to build camaraderie and make the workplace a much more comfortable environment.  I love that I’ll be able to address the entire staff at once through the audio system and the emergency safety alerts.”

That’s right, when the boss needs to make an announcement he can use ELAN’s COMM2 phone system to page specific zones or the whole building, automatically muting the current audio source and giving him a quick way to address his team. The ELAN g! system is also integrated with the fire alarm and sprinkler system, so if a fire is detected the system will send an audio alert through all 65 speakers to warn and inform the employees.  To access the ELAN g! controls there are eight ELAN TS7 7-inch touch screens located throughout the building, an ELAN TS10 10-inch touch screen in Valastro’s office, two ELAN HR2 remotes, with up to 22 more HR2s planned for controlling the 24 flat screen HDTVs, and of course he will be able to control it all from his iPhone and iPad, from anywhere in the world.

One of the major benefits of the ELAN g! system is that as soon as he wants to, Valastro can have 360 Media Innovations incorporate additional subsystems to be controlled by g!

“Soon we will integrate the 24 flat screen TVs located throughout the building and as we get used to the new space and evaluate our needs, we may add control for the lights, heating, air conditioning, security system and surveillance cameras,” said Valastro.

According to Chima Gale, President of 360 Media Innovations, the ELAN g! Control System was the best choice for Carlo’s Bakery Lackawanna. “Because the ELAN g! graphical user interface is so easy to use, it’s perfect for this type of commercial installation where a lot of people will be using the touch screens to adjust system settings. It will be simple to integrate additional subsystems in the future, and the already installed paging and safety features add so much value to the audio system that it would have been a waste to use any other product,” he said.

In addition to the bakery floor there is a receptionist area, a conference room, a client consultation room, an office for Valastro and two classrooms where he, his decorators and other guest bakers will offer paid baking classes to the public. Carlo’s Bakery Lackawanna has been shown on “The Cake Boss” several times and will become a regular shoot location for future seasons.

Available starting at under $2,000 for a single-room, four sub-system control solution, the ELAN g! Series Control System can be expanded quickly and cost-effectively to enable whole-home control of every room appliance.  ELAN g! provides users with the most uniform and intuitive icon-based control from their favorite devices, including TVs, touch screens, touchpads, 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 - or across the globe.

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.