Control4 expects to expand sales of its home automation products ...

test last year in its Magnolia departments, selling Control4 remotes, thermostats, keypads, touch screens and lighting controls through stores in Atlanta, Houston and Raleigh- Durham, N.C., he said. Control4 provides training for Magnolia to install the products, Yoon said. Best Buy officials weren’t available for comment. In selling Control4 products, Best Buy “has some interesting challenges, but some advantages,” Yoon said. “They can come to your home and do whole-home automation. The installers come in and they can program just about anything.” Best Buy Venture Capital was among those participating in a funding round earlier this year in which Control4 raised $17.3 million for a new division creating systems for monitoring and controlling home energy use. In addition to Best Buy, Frazier Technology Partners, Thomas Weisel Venture Partners and vSpring Capital also provided funding, Control4 said. Control4 Energy Group is developing a $200 “Energy Controller” -- a wireless thermostat that’s linked to a gateway device that communicates with smart meters, Yoon said. The device, which contains a five-inch LCD, will first be distributed in early 2010 through electric utilities, Yoon said. The utilities will likely provide a subsidy so the controller can be offered free to customers, Control4 officials said. Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative, which has 84,000 members between Austin and Houston, Texas, signed on recently to carry the device. Control4 also has been testing its systems energy management capabilities with Xcel Energy’s SmartGridCity project in Denver, Yoon said. The project involves the utility sending commands to cut lights and air conditioners during peak demand times. Control4 also is in tests with other utilities that Yoon declined to identify. The company’s systems are designed to operate with two-way smart meters that use ZigBee to send and receive data into homes. Control4 also is studying ways to connect a utility with a homeowner via broadband and announced an agreement with the Z-Wave Alliance at CEDIA. Control4 sells its home automation products through about 1,400 dealers, including many CEDIA-type installers, who also will likely offer the energy controller, he said. Meanwhile, Control4 kicked off plans for a third party software driver and application developer program for its operating system with a preliminary meeting at CEDIA on Saturday, Yoon said. Control4 will conduct beta tests in the next few weeks of a 2.0 version of its OS with a goal of releasing it by year-end. It plans to have a software developers conference in February in Salt Lake City, he said. Control4 developed several software applications internally for its OS including Yahoo news feeds, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and OpenTable. Control4 will charge an application fee and certify the programs, Yoon said. Many applications will likely be free, but some may charge $5, he said. Control4 introduced a similar developer program for hardware two years ago that produced some products including a Black & Decker lock, Yoon said.