Builders, remodelers, designers and technologists will be gathering at the San Diego Convention Center next week at the CEDIA Expo to find out. If you’re going to be one of the 20,000 home technology enthusiasts expected to attend, you’ll get to see these concepts displayed in real life. If you’re not, St. Louis-based CEDIA Board of Directors member Joe Whitaker of The Thoughtful Home and San Diego-based home technology consultant Terry Morton of Land & Sea Entertainment offer this preview of three top three home technology trends worth following in the year ahead.

Origin Acoustics’ new Valet audio amplifier, debuting at CEDIA 2017, is all kinds of WOW. It takes a bunch of cheap Amazon Echo Dots and turns them into elegant sources for a premium whole-house music experience. The solution is unique. There’s nothing like it … today.

If you think about melding a $50 Dot with a high-performance sound system, it seems a little absurd; however, Origin founder and CEO Jeremy Burkhardt says the Dot’s role in the whole set-up is pretty simple: “We’re using it as a mic and an Internet device.”

And when he says “we,” he means long-time integrator Joe Whitaker, who co-developed the system with Burkhardt and team.