Photo of a towable Tiny Home by New York Based startup, Cubist Engineering, known as ‘The Sturgis’

Living Large in 170 sq ft - A Luxury Tiny Home Meets Home Automation

Supriya Samuel
Supriya Samuel

Linear actuators have been used in several ways, in different industries, and for various applications. Today, they are being used to transform a home to a smart home, giving homeowners the ability to control items in the house such as windows, doors, TV cabinets and much more, with the aim to make things simple and easy.

We at Progressive Automations recently received a beautiful project of a towable Tiny Home by New York Based startup, Cubist Engineering. Known as ‘The Sturgis’, this tiny home includes a living room, a spa-like luxury bathroom with an outdoor shower, a fully equipped kitchen with an induction cooktop, a fridge, and a pull-down bed. Interestingly, it also includes a Garage space!

It gets better - all this fits in a total size of 170 sq. ft!

Your Favourite Wheels on Wheels

Cubist Engineering_Progressive Automations

The home garage especially caught our interest, as the team at Cubist Engineering used 2 of our PA-17-24-2000 actuators for the Gull Wing Door. John B Carnett, co-founder at Cubist engineering said, “We wanted to create a small space like a weekend retreat with something extra. So, we added a space designed specifically for a motorcycle, like a bonus garage at the end of your living room. But that required a way to get the motorcycle into the unit, so we custom built a steel gull-wing door that would open with the push of a button.”

The Progressive Automations actuators are used to push the door open and to close it as seen in the video above. “The door needed to be sturdy steel to make sure we got no deflection when opening, so we needed powerful actuators with electronic controls to drive it,” he added.

Home Automation System

Over recent years, actuators have become quite popular in the home automation setting and are used to control almost everything in a home that requires an up and down movement.

“We are big fans of automation. When done correctly, it can make a space more livable, easier, almost intuitive. The key is to find automation that truly adds convenience without adding excessive noise or taking up too much space. Our gull-wing door for instance needed to be automated because it would be awkward to lift and close manually, automation makes the owner more likely to take advantage of the feature.”

In fact, a big space-saving trick in The Sturgis unit is the hideaway bed that is lowered down from the ceiling with the touch of a button. Yet another unique feature thanks to automation. “Since it’s something you’re going to use every night, automation makes the bed that much more convenient.”

We would love to know more about your application or project using our actuator products. Give us a call or email us sales@progressiveautomations.com.