Karroong house is a brand new building, built to house up to 6 people with varying degrees of disability.  We were asked to design and construct the technical services.  The prime directive given to Zentec from Karingal, was to implement technology in the building to improve the lives of the occupants and allow them the ability to control their environment, lighting, heating, cooling and even sound.  While most people take this for granted, if you have limited physical or mental abilities the the services we have provided are putting the lifestyle back in to life for these special people.
   
  

These images are of the outside of the home, and one of the bedrooms.  You can view a virtual tour of the building at Karingal's web site.. Click here for the link to karingals virtual tour.


                            

Ian Corless (Zentec) and Shane Ivill (Clipsal) standing in front of the CBus service cupboard.  You can see from the CBus board image that we take a great deal of pride in quality of workmanship, and finish. The labelling makes future service simple. A personal goal, we placed on the project was engineering for low maintance, and universal maintance, to keep the future costs at a minimum. 

 

Shane Ivill, Ian Corless and Karingal service's Jacqui Pierce, at the official opening of the house standing in front of the Clipsal Colour touch screen (controls the entire house from a central location).

     

This image is of the standard bed room's, bed head switches.  We chose the CBus "Avanti" range of switches because of the large switch area, making it easier for people with limited dexterity to operate them. The top switch is for Nurse call / assistance, and is duplicated in the associated ensuite.  When pressed, it brings up an alert on the touch screen, and also from the speaker in the office, it speaks "Bed room 1 help required" every minute untill acknowledged.  We are planning a further part to the system, a pocket / belt buzzer so that if the staff are out of the office and attending in say bed room 6 they will instantly know help is required in bed room 1.

The second switch plate has 2 switches, "Audio volume" and "Audio source".  This controls the audio in that room.  There are 8 zones of audio throughout the house.  The occupant of each bedroom can operate their own audio.  We kept the control simple as you can see.  The "Audio volume" turns the audio on and off and also controls the volume.  The "Audio source" each time it is pressed, advances to the next source in sequence (Radio 1, Radio 2, Local source and then back to Radio 1).  The radio stations are chosen from the staff touch screen, and so the house shares 2 prefered stations.  The "Local source" is the RCA (audio visual) plugs on the bottom wall plate in the image.  This is so each room can plug in their own iPod for example, and enjoy their prefered music.  This adds a large degree of comfort to the occupant, and allows personal control of their environment.  Although we usualy installa more complex audi system, this is the right outcome for this application.

The 3 gang switch plate on the wall, is for wall light, ceiling light and ceiling fan.  It may seem as though there is quite a bit going on here with 4 plates on the wall, but this is actually a very simple out come considering the results.

   

In these images you can see the outside reader head, door motor, and door lock (located in the fixed 1/4 door).  We worked wit Technical Solutions to achieve this outcome.
Click here for the link to technical solutions

We have also installed an access control system.  This consists of a reader head located on the inside and outside of the door.  Each occupant has their own unique card for access.  When the bedroom 1 occupant leaves, the touch screen starts counting, and when it reaches a time (chosen by the staff on the touch screen), if the occupant has not returned the touch screen generates an alert that "Bed room 1 occupant is outside the building".  This gives the staff the ability to monitor the occupant with out being too invasive in their life, independence.

Click here for the Ocean Grove Voice article from December 2010   (page 3 of the Voice)

Click here for the "Connected Home" magazine article

We entered this project into the CEDIA 2011 awards, click the link to go to the CEDIA awards entries, we entered this project under the category "Best commercial project"
Click here for the link to the CEDIA awards page

The total budget of this project was only $57,000 the category winner was a technical upgrade to the Adelaide Convention Centre with a technical services budget of $3,750,000  so we are in good company even considering the disparity in project budgets.