In Control at IDES Showroom

For over 30 years, AWE customer IDES has been a leading provider of professionally installed home automation in Scotland. Based in Edinburgh, IDES is an award-winning installer with a wealth of in-house expertise, including planners, engineers and installers enabling them to offer a holistic start-to-finish service to clients. In 2022, the company was acquired by CSS and now boasts a field base of 80 support engineers and electricians, looking after 35,000 customers across Scotland for a variety of services.

Bringing the Smart Home to Life
The jewel in the crown for IDES is its customer showroom which opened in 2008. Situated in the old post office in the Kingsknowe area of Edinburgh, the showroom perfectly demonstrates professional automation and how it can elevate a home.

IDES opted to integrate URC home automation into the showroom and worked closely with AWE, the exclusive distributor to the CI Market.

“We’ve been buying URC from AWE for many years and have always been happy with the performance, value for money, ease of integration, and user feedback, so it was the obvious choice for the showroom.” explains Stephen Kerr, Technical Director at IDES. “We wanted a space where we could demo the systems we were installing and show how the technology could be hidden within a home. With URC we’ve created an automated living room environment that can transform into a cinema room, at the touch of a button.”

The showroom includes products and systems from multiple professional integration brands, including Silent Gliss, Panasonic, and Denon. This provides the opportunity for clients to see these products in situ and experience how they can be seamlessly integrated into a URC solution for simplified control.

“One of the main reasons we adopted URC as our chosen control platform is its easy integration with KNX. URC interfaces seamlessly with our KNX heating, lighting and window treatment control, and this is a big plus for customers too.” comments Stephen.

The Possibilities of URC
“We always encourage potential clients to come in for demo regardless of what product they are interested in.” continues Stephen. “Recently we had a client who was looking for a new entry phone. He arrived early and was shown into the demo space and given a coffee. Before I entered the room, he’d already pressed the ‘demo all screens’ button on the URC touch screen. He couldn’t see any obvious screens and was curious to see what would happen – he was amazed when the curtains closed, the lights dimmed, and three displays magically appeared! As a result, he purchased a URC control system.”

The Gold Standard
Last year, IDES became the first URC showroom outside of the USA to receive ‘URC Certified Showroom’ status. This coveted accolade is only be granted if a show room meets certain qualifying criteria.

Stephen concludes; “We’re delighted to be the first URC Certified Showroom in Europe. The accolade came on the back of an exciting period for IDES, which included winning ‘Best International Installation’ in the URC Unsurpassed Awards and our acquisition by CSS. Working with URC presents a tremendous opportunity to delight clients and elevate your business. I’d encourage installers to find out more – it would be wonderful to see more certified showrooms across Europe!”