Why Upgrading Your Network, Smart Home, and Connected Devices Is Essential

Smart Home Updates & Elevated Living

Smart home living offers an elevated lifestyle that makes people wonder how they ever lived without it. It creates an environment that changes with the activity or time of day. Your “Good Morning” playlist nudges you awake as sunlight enters through slowly rising automated shades.

The interior lighting matches the changing sunlight. Security cameras alert you when a stranger steps onto your property. An OLED TV emerges from the ceiling, the lights dim, the shades close, and a breathtaking sound surrounds you—all because you pressed “Movie Night” on a touchscreen in your media room. 

Living in a smart home is nothing if not extraordinary. 

Like all technology, however, it requires updates and upgrades. These updates are critical across your home network, smart home automation platform, and the devices it connects to. Without them, your smart home becomes vulnerable to emerging cybersecurity threats, incompatibility issues arise, and you no longer enjoy the optimal performance it once delivered. Upgrades elevate your smart home living to a new level.

Here, we’ll explore what it means to live in an upgraded smart home. 

SEE ALSO: Creating a Dream Smart Home with Lutron Shades & Ketra Lighting

A Modern Smart Home

At Elite Automation, we partner with Control4, a globally renowned home automation platform. This system transforms the ordinary into extraordinary by creating responsive living spaces that communicate with lighting, shades, security, climate, home entertainment systems, and more. 

It provides unified control over your smart home’s many devices and enables them to communicate with one another. You pull into the driveway, and your smart home unlocks the door, adjusts the thermostat, turns on the landscape and first-floor lights, streams your evening playlist, and ignites the fireplace.

However, maintaining this level of integrated living requires updates as technology and operating systems continue to evolve. Otherwise, you’ll eventually find your smart home no longer providing the awe-inspiring moments that once left you amazed. 

The Latest Operating System: Control4 X4

Control4 X4 officially launched in 2025. This latest operating system represents a significant redesign and the biggest upgrade since Control4’s OS 3 release in 2019. This system reimagines the user experience, making it seamless and effortless. Clearer icons, faster navigation, and smarter automation elevate smart home living. 

It also puts you in the driver’s seat. Life changes and preferences rearrange; in the past, you would have had to call your integrator to reflect these changes in your smart home.

Now, you can create new scenes seamlessly. Instead of a living room that glows with golden candlelight, shades lowered, and Andrea Bocelli’s “Con Te Partirò” streaming through your home when you press the “Relax” button, you’d like the spa to heat, the firepit to ignite, the landscape lights to create a mystical ambiance, and Enya’s “Watermark” to stream through your outdoor audio system. It’s a significantly different experience and, with Control4 X4, one that you can create in minutes. 

Optimal Performance Through Device Enhancement

Thanks to compounding knowledge and interconnected innovations, technology is advancing at the fastest rate in history. If your smart home’s connected devices include decades-old technology, you’re missing out on some of the most remarkable advancements of our time. 

Lighting is no longer stagnant. Instead, it shifts in intensity and color throughout the day, aligning with the sun's changing light and bringing the natural world indoors. 

The latest smart home assistant, Josh.ai, enables hands-free smart home living through its artificial intelligence and ability to understand complex commands. “Ok, Josh, turn the lights to cerulean, play Life of Pi, lower the shades, and lock the doors.” Josh knows you’re in the media room and that you want the OLED TV to descend from the ceiling, watch one of your favorite movies, and transition the lights to a shade between azure and sky blue. In fact, it knows all the colors the advanced Ketra lighting system offers—over 16 million.  

A Secure Home Network

The backbone of your smart home is your home network. It connects the many devices to your home automation platform and to one another. And as more smart devices and advanced home entertainment systems enter your home, the demand on your home network grows exponentially. 

Eventually, without sufficient upgrades, your smart home begins to show signs of bandwidth overload. The spinning wheel of doom appears more frequently when streaming your favorite shows. Downloads that used to take seconds now take an unacceptably long time. Video calls drop, and streaming music to the far corners of your property no longer carries the crystal-clear quality it once possessed. 

These signs indicate it's time for an enterprise-grade home network, one designed specifically for smart homes. 

At Elite Automation, our home automation and audio-video company helps homeowners live their best lives by deploying technology effectively. If you’re ready to elevate your day-to-day lifestyle, contact Elite Automation.