The members of the Greenbrier Golf and Country Club in Lexington, KY, have a new form of recreation to enjoy, thanks to the recent addition of a smart, connected 17,000-square-foot clubhouse. Integrated seamlessly within the new facility are a variety of technologies from Snap One, all designed, engineered, and customized by 46Solutions to treat Greenbrier members to a new level of luxury that’s as comfortable and convivial as it is technologically advanced.
Members love the space for its amazing AV and comfortable atmosphere; employees relish the convenient, versatile controls. “It’s a new, modern twist on the traditional clubhouse atmosphere where technologies work behind the scenes to elevate every experience throughout the facility,” said Nathan Cecil, projector manager of 46Solutions.
AV in Every Area
Strategically placed throughout the multipurpose facility are dozens of speakers and displays delivering a curated playlist of music and video to members as they grab a bite at the café, break a sweat at the gym, or practice a few swings at the golf simulator. This abundance of AV demanded a robust system to manage and distribute content from one main rack of components and provide employees an easy means of control. Together, Snap One’s Binary Media-Over-IP system and Triad AMS 16x16 switcher tied to a Control4 entertainment and automation processor do the trick.
The highly customizable nature of the Control4 Core 5 processor allowed the 46Solutions team to establish daily routines for the AV systems to follow. For example, at 5 a.m. the AV and lighting activates only in the gym. By 8 a.m. other TVs, speakers, plus Control4 light switches and thermostats join in and at 11 p.m. everything turns off. It’s this hand-off approach that simplifies the management of the huge clubhouse and ensures a high-level of customer satisfaction.
Naturally, there are occasions when the staff must override these scripted scenes, “like during golf scrambles when they need the audio system to tie in a microphone for announcements,” said Cecil. Control4 keypads and touch panels mounted in key areas, as well as a Control4 app on personal tablets and smartphones, enable changes like these on the fly.
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“Simplicity was paramount to the Greenbrier managers so we programmed these interfaces to be as intuitive as possible, for example, presenting favorite commands on the main screen of touchpanels,” Cecil added. From customized Control4 keypads and touchpanels, employees manage entertainment in 16 independent audio zones and 20 TV locations.
Greenbrier wisely elected to update other areas while the grounds were under construction. Outdated outdoor speakers around the nearby club swimming pool were swapped for newer models and tied to the clubhouse audio system. Like all interior audio zones, the swimming pool speakers make up their own separate zones, which means they can play music that’s completely different from other speakers in other zones.
24 Cameras Keep an Eye on the Property
Another add-on to 46Solutions’ original quote was surveillance. “Construction is prime time to integrate technology, so after more consideration, Greenbrier management decided to have us also install several surveillance cameras to the interior and exterior of the new building,” Cecil said. “The building had been prewired with a Cisco networking system so implementing the cameras was a fairly simple process.”
Like all of the other components installed by 46Solutions, the 24 Clare Controls cameras and video recorder from Snap One are managed and controlled by Control4 for simplicity and convenience. “Trespassing and burglary isn’t a huge issue for Greenbrier, so they mainly use the surveillance system to check up on certain areas, like making sure kids are behaving in the golf simulation room,” Cecil noted. “They can access video in real-time from a computer monitor in the office and always look at footage later that’s triggered by motion and recorded automatically.”
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Other Updates on the Grounds
With the positive reaction to the initial enhancement, 46Solutions upgraded the Control4 operating system in the original clubhouse to the newest OS 3. “It’s simple to do, thanks to the engineering and remote access features of the system,” Cecil said. “Being able to modify settings is a key benefit to the Control4 platform and clients like Greenbrier. It’s very difficult to nail down specific brightness levels of lights, for example, until you’ve lived with them for a few weeks. By integrating an OvrC cloud management system into the new clubhouse, we can adjust levels immediately and troubleshoot and resolve issues quickly from our office or while on the road.”
