Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysis

Internet of Things

  • Home
  • Analysis
  • Startups
  • How-To
  • News
  • Podcast
  • About
  • Speaking
    • Facebook
    • RSS
    • Twitter
    • YouTube

An update on everything Centralite

September 17, 2019 by Stacey Higginbotham 2 Comments

The Centralite family of products.

Earlier this year Centrallite filed for bankruptcy, and now post-CEDIA we have a clear understanding of how that affects consumers. Most of the Centralite assets were purchased by EZLO, a company that is rolling up several smart home brands and has just released a small smart home hub product. However, the founders of Centralite have formed their own company, called Dragon Technology to service existing installations and eventually build new smart home products.

Jim Busby, the founder of Centralite and now Dragon, says that he and his son Jimmy Busby, are starting their business to support and service several older Centralite brands. They include the Elegance lighting control systems, LiteJet and EleanceXL. They will also support ZigBee-based lighting systems sold such as the JetStream brand of lights. Finally, they will also support the Entrexx systems that are installed in roughly 80 hotels around the world.  Jim Busby says he hopes to modernize those hotel systems and get back into the business of providing smart lighting, temperature control, and other products for the hotel industry.

“There is a pretty big pent-up demand for spare parts and service because the Centralite support line went unanswered for a long time,” says Busby Sr. in an email. “So we have started out with a nice bang based on suddenly being able to provide support and parts for the systems.”

Busby says the company has been in business for about four weeks, although he had been in negotiations with the bankruptcy court and EZLO for much longer, to try to bring this vision to fruition. In the near term, he says the focus will be building a national and international service and support network. The company is starting to contact former Centralite dealers to see if they want to work with the new entity. He also hopes to recruit new dealers.

Meanwhile, EZLO, which purchased the Centralite brand is building its own smart home-focused lineup. It has purchased Vera, which made Z-wave hubs, Fortrezz, which made leak detection devices, and MiOs which provides a platform for smart home development and deployment. Roger Gregory, a VP of product management with EZLO, says the company purchased Centralite to add to its smart home capability and is still determining which sensors and products it plans to keep in the brand. Overall the strategy for EZLO is to focus on five segments in the smart home: security, energy, property management, home automation, and water flow and shutoff.

The Centralite purchase added ZigBee lighting and sensors to that category, so the EZLO plans for a well-rounded smart home system are coming together.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Analysis, Featured Tagged With: Centralite, Ezlo, Fortrezz, MiOs, zigbee

Sponsors



Become a sponsor

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to receive notifications of new posts by email.

Comments

  1. Neville Wynne Cole says

    August 6, 2020 at 9:00 am

    Good day, I am trying to source spare 4 way dimmer relay boards (220v AC) for a fairly old installation.
    Are these available? Do you have distributors/agents in South Africa?

    Reply
  2. Chris H says

    November 5, 2022 at 9:37 pm

    Somehow this is the first document I’ve seen mentioning the bankruptcy and it came up when I was searching for matter support for these devices. Hopefully the other company continues support for centralites zigbee line that it is an easy firmware transition if the bancroupt company name is wiped from existance.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

IoT Podcast

Listen to the latest episode of the Internet of Things Podcast. Just press play!

Sponsors

Become a sponsor







Get Stacey’s free weekly Internet of Things newsletter

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Recent Comments

  • YYTT on So long, and thanks for all the insights
  • Stacey Higginbotham on Matter is now official!
  • Kevin Wirick on Matter is now official!
  • John on Episode 437: Goodbye and good luck

Stacey on Twitter

Tweets by gigastacey
Copyright © 2023 SKT Labs, LLC · Privacy Policy