There’s no denying it, the over 50 population is expanding rapidly, and the push is on for enjoyable, independent living.

Volutone, Simi Valley, Calif., a regional distributor in the southern California and Nevada territory and member of the PowerHouse Alliance, announced that effective July 1, 2014 the company is again a distributor for Sony Electronics to select A/V specialty retailers and custom installers in the southern California and Nevada regions.

Tri-Ed, Woodbury, N.Y., an independent security distributor, added Schlage to its access control line card. Schlage is a manufacturer of deadbolts, touchscreen keyless entry locks, keypad entry locks, doorknobs, levers, handlesets, hardware and accessories, cables, chains, and padlocks.

Linear LLC, Carlsbad, Calif., a provider of security and home automation, access control, and health and wellness announced the launch of its three-way Z-Wave smart switch, model WT00Z.

Yale Locks & Hardware announced its next generation of key-free Z-Wave® deadbolts with the introduction of new push button and touchscreen models.

Nest Labs Inc., Palo Alto, Calif., has released a new white paper sharing field data on the incidence and characteristics of carbon monoxide (CO) events detected by the Nest Protect: Smoke + Carbon Monoxide™ alarm.

Leviton, Melville N.Y., announced the introduction of its Provolt ODC family of line-voltage occupancy and vacancy sensors. The new sensors simplify energy management with an easy to install self-contained solution. Provolt occupancy sensor models include line voltage occupancy sensing, daylight harvesting and manual-ON/auto-OFF override control in a single unit with no special control stations required.

“You Speak. Your Home Listens,” boldly states security and home automation provider ADT, Boca Raton, Fla., when announcing the availability of ADT Pulse® Voice, a new app that combines the ADT features customers know and love with the security and convenience of personal voice commands that allows users to safely manage their home with personal commands.

Analysts at Gartner Inc. have predicted that “smart home” products will add $1.9 trillion to the global economy in the next six years. While that number may seem high in a market of fragmented product lines that don’t always “play nice,” it looked a lot more realistic with the announcement by Google’s Nest, and six other companies (Yale Security, Silicon Labs, Samsung Electronics, Freescale® Semiconductor, Big Ass Fans and ARM) that the companies have formed the Thread Group (www.threadgroup.org) to develop Thread, a new IP-based wireless networking protocol.

Savant Systems LLC, Hyannis, Mass., a provider of smart home technology, announced new products in its Smart Series lineup.