5 Reasons to Centralize & Consolidate Crestron Control Racks

The #DoneRightNotEasy crew is no stranger to poorly designed and installed Crestron control systems. One of the most glaring errors we see when taking over a system for a new client is control and streaming components localized throughout a home rather than being centralized and consolidated. A few weeks ago we discussed this concept in our common Crestron issues series and today we’ll be taking a deeper dive, looking at the top 5 reasons that centralized and consolidated control racks are critical to proper Crestron system design.

The return of your valuable space

When you build and work in luxury homes, every square foot carries significant value. Rack consolidation starts with the removal of all video content devices from TV locations to a centralized control rack, immediately returning this valued space back to the homeowner for storage and ascetic purposes. This also means that equipment cannot be accidentally altered or damaged by cleaning staff, children or other individuals moving about the space.

Creating redundancies for better performance

When you bring video source components to a central location they are no longer locally connected to a specific device, allowing the end user to access any device from any screen in the home. These redundancies are also created to protect against failing equipment, f one piece of equipment fails the user is immediately moved to a backup device with zero downtime.

Monitoring and Maintenance

Centralized equipment provides service engineers detailed audit trails of system history, pinpointing and issues to a specific device allowing for speedy troubleshooting and service. The information provided to engineers by a centralized rack is incredibly detailed and allows them to remotely monitor overall system health.

Lower your footprint

Centralizing equipment allows all equipment to reside in one temperature controlled room, which not only results in better device performance and increases device lifespan, but also reduces the cost of cooling multiple device and rack locations down to one, thus lowering the recurring expense of the energy and maintenance of multiple cooling systems, further maintaining the energy efficiency of your system in total.

Fewer Failure points

When control racks are centralized it means much shorter cable runs between devices which greatly reduces the possibility of problems stemming from cabling and or cable damage. Overall reduction of failure points throughout the system means any issues can be identified and addressed quickly and efficiently without support staff needing to move throughout the home.  

With all these factors and more, It’s easy to see why we at GMI insist on centralizing and simplifying our control systems, giving our clients more robust and powerful automation.