By Susan Semenak
Imagine leaving home and pressing a single button to turn off lights, draw the curtains and arm the security system. Or picture returning after a long day with an armload full of groceries and unlocking the front door with just the wave of your palm, then turning a dial to adjust the air conditioning, put on some mood music and get the oven going for supper.
That’s what the Moorgen Smart Panel does. The German company, working with designers around the world, has been at the forefront of smart technologies for more than a decade and has won numerous awards for its sleek design and “humanized” ease of use. Marco Mir, CEO of Toronto-based Prime Smart Solutions Inc., is the exclusive distributor of Moorgen products in Canada. When he shows visitors around his showroom, his excitement is palpable and it isn’t long before even the most technologically skittish among them are enthralled too.
“What this thing can do in your house is incredible,” he says as he walks through the showroom. “You can program just about everything and it will learn to recognize your preferences, day and night, using artificial intelligence capabilities. It will do what you want and need it to do time and time again.” Adorning the showroom walls are sleek Moorgen panels in stone, burnished wood and even black Swarovski crystals; the company even creates custom panels to match the surfaces of its clients’ walls.
Smart technologies are rapidly entering our day-to-day, making our lives easier, more efficient and more cost-conscious. The Moorgen Smart Panel, along with its sister collection of portable smart knobs and wireless remote controls, takes smart home technologies to new levels with cutting-edge design and simple, comfortable user interface.
“WHAT MOORGEN DOES IS ALLOW USERS TO CREATE THEIR OWN AMBIENCE
THROUGHOUT THE HOUSE. WE HAVE CREATED THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF CUSTOMIZATION.”
In sleep mode, for example, the Moorgen dims the lights gradually, draws the curtains and lowers the room temperature. When you get up in the night to go to the bathroom, a motion sensor in the hallway ceiling will detect you approaching and turn on the lights to guide your way. When you return to bed it will turn them off. In the morning, the Moorgen Smart Panel will know when you are likely to get up and how quickly you’ll want your cappuccino. “You’ll never have to touch a button,” Mir says. “It is connected to all your smart appliances and devices, and it will come to understand your habits.”
He points to the environmental benefits and the cost savings of a smart system that dims the lights and adjusts the ambient temperature according to the time of day and the season, as well as the homeowners’ personal preferences.
But the advanced technology isn’t the only thing that Mir’s clients are drawn to. The Moorgen Smart Panel has also won prestigious international design awards for its high-end aesthetics. The panels come in myriad styles, some of them designed by international luminaries, among them Zaha Hadid, the late Iraqi-English architect and designer known as “queen of the curve” for her visionary designs. “The Moorgen Smart Panel isn’t just incredible technology,” Mir says. “It’s a beautiful thing.”