There's an old story that during the height of the Cold War and the space race, NASA spent millions developing a ballpoint pen that could write in zero gravity, while Soviet Cosmonauts just used a pencil. The moral as it applies to custom installation, is that technological innovation is great, but results are what an integrator is getting paid for.

While talking to reps from some automation vendors recently for a story I was working on, the common thread in the discussions was that, bells and whistles aside, at the end of the day, the clients just want their systems to work.

Custom channel professionals are enthusiastic technophiles by nature. It's easy to get dazzled by cool technology, and want to jam as much of it into a client's home as possible. It's also just as easy when debugging a new system to get caught up in over complicated workarounds that cost too much time and money relative to the final outcome.

Finishing a system on time and on budget is what makes the difference between being a profitable company, and puttering around so much that it's really just a hobby.

Up front, good system design follows from having the minimum number of boxes and wires necessary to achieve the system's required functionality. The fewer links in the chain, the fewer the number of things that can go wrong.

It also helps if a system uses the absolute minimum number of brands, which is part of the reason why automation vendors like Crestron, AMX, Control4, and so on, offer a breadth of hardware systems: the assurance that the selected gear will play well with others is key.

By the same token, simplicity in system configuration means that when it's time to troubleshoot for bugs (and there will almost always be bugs), there are fewer individual checklist items that require testing.

On the topic of problem solving, take a cue from the Soviet-era rocket scientists. Don't get bogged down in solutions that create more work than they solve. The cardinal rules of troubleshooting should always be observed: which is that the problem must be repaired, and future foreseeable problems must be prevented.

But the best solution is the one that does all that while costing the least amount of time and money to implement.

My favourite example of the simple and direct approach is one I've used before. At my old job, we installed over a dozen wireless music zones as part of a retrofit project. The client's 2.4GHz cordless phone was interfering with the zone players, a problem never encountered before or since. What was the solution?

Sending a technician to Costco and buying the client a different brand of cordless phone. Total cost: $150, plus driving time, which was easy to accept on a $50,000 project.

Cleverness, resourcefulness and a dogged approach to problem solving are the hallmarks of a successful integration company. But that doesn't mean creating a level of complexity worthy of Wile E. Coyote. Keep it simple, and remember that the client just wants it all to work.

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