Jack Kruyne
We may never drive space cars that fold up into briefcases, a la George Jetson. But in the not-so-distant future, you may find yourself talking to your house on your cell phone on the way home from work. You'll tell the stove to switch from refrigeration to cook, bring up the lights in the garage, turn on the stereo and adjust the thermostat. And if it's dark, you can order a security camera to pan across the yard before you pull into your driveway.
Although "smart," or automated, homes have been around for more than a decade, the technology has remained expensive and glitchy until fairly recently. Lighting, HVAC, audio, security and water all required separate automation systems that couldn't "talk" to each other, so each required a dedicated remote. More often than not, you'd accidentally trip the stereo while trying to turn off the lights.
But the smart house has upped its IQ exponentially. Companies like Zensys, ZigBee and Smarthome are rolling out wireless or computer-based systems that are the closest thing yet to a brain for your house. Centralized, adaptable and operated with one remote or computer touch pad, most of these new systems run on a chip that costs less than $10. And the best news of all? Wireless systems mean an end to cords, switches and widgets.
"With an integrated home, people are buying into a whole experience," says Craig Miller, president of St. Louis-based Experionics, a company that specializes in both home entertainment systems and whole-home automation. "Getting rid of the clutter is definitely a part of that. Husbands think the gadgets are cool, but decorators and wives love us. They don't have to work around all those plugs and wires anymore." (Miller says he can even create "invisible speakers" for clients using fine, porous speaker foam that can be mudded, taped, painted or papered like a normal wall.)
Although the finished, functioning automated home should be like "cruise control for your car," Miller advises clients to start planning automation systems from the word go. "It's not about just putting in some speakers behind the drywall," he says. "There's so much more that we can do, especially if the architect is involved. The earlier you start thinking about it, the better off you'll be."
Although he agrees that home automation is on the verge of going mainstream thanks to new technology, Miller doesn't recommend his clients go totally wireless--yet.
"Wireless is becoming more prevalent, because it helps if you're retrofitting. But if you're building a new home, you're still best off with the wires--unless you can say your cell phone has never cut out on you," he says with a chuckle. Miller says his company offers a streamlined but stable home automation system that uses a proprietary central processor to allow wired-in subsystems to talk to each other. That includes security, lighting, audio and video, thermostat, sprinklers, phone, garage door and even the drapes. Although you can't call your house and ask it to start dinner for you, Experionics' system will allow you to dim the lights or check your security cameras online. "And we try to design each system so that it can stand alone, especially critical systems," he says. "If the central processor fails, everything still works. We can have that processor notify us, so we'll know there's a problem before the client does."
As technical as it all sounds, Miller says you don't have to be a genius to live in a smart house. "You have to keep it simple," he says. "Otherwise, there's no point--people definitely don't automate their homes to make life more complicated."
Most of Experionics' systems use a computer touch pad, though the company can customize controls to suit individual wants or needs.
"We have one client who has three homes throughout the U.S., ours being one of them," Miller says. "We have set up an 'I'm leaving the house' button for him. It's on a five-second delay so it won't kick in if someone presses it accidentally. It goes through all 20 zones of audio and video and turns them off, takes the HVAC back five degrees, auto-closes the drapes to protect his antique rugs from the sunlight, arms the security system and turns out all the lights except pathway lights, which stay on for two minutes. That way, if he forgets something, he doesn't have to bring the whole house back up."
And though "I'm leaving" buttons and even the term "smart house" make home automation sound, well, holistic, Miller emphasizes that despite recent upgrades in technology, each part is still greater than the whole. Systems and prices are as individual as each family; for new homes, cost is usually around three to 10 percent of the entire cost (which would be $90,000 to $300,000 for a $3 million home), and retrofitting runs two or three times higher.
"We probably have 20 homes locally that are high-value smart homes," Miller says. "But you have to be careful with that term. It's a range--it's like asking how many smart kids there are. How do you answer that?"
Art Noparstak, a home-automation expert with Illinois' Intermatic Home Protection and Controls, agrees. "As far as holistic goes, I think that's a good thought and a bad thought," he says. "It really makes someone feel like they're being progressive, and automation can be fun. The bad part is that people have this idea about what a smart home is, or what home automation is--those terms can mean a lot of different things."
In fact, the term "smart home" means lots of different things at Intermatic alone. Its HomeSettings line, available at big-box hardware stores nationally, is a simple, affordable kit ($30-$100) that includes two plug-in appliance adapters and a master remote that can be programmed to choreograph your lights, TV and stereo to turn on and off at set intervals (or to dim or brighten on a schedule) and is designed to be expanded over time as compliant appliances hit the market.
For those who want total automation built into a new home, Intermatic also offers whole-house automation systems that can be professionally installed by a homebuilder. All the systems, simple and complex, use Zensys' Z-Wave radio frequency technology, a wireless system that operates on a mesh network (i.e., the signal bounces from device to device to find the most efficient path). Z-Wave has been around for about three years, and compliant appliances are already available.
"The most important thing about Z-Wave," Noparstak says, "is that in order to have a product that is considered compliant, it must be interoperable with all other products that use that wave chip. So if Wayne-Dalton makes a garage door, and I make a lighting module, he should be able to control my lighting and I should be able to control his door."
Noparstak adds that Z-Wave uses a high-frequency wireless signal that's far more robust than what most cell phones use. He says signals reach 50 feet at least, and that's a conservative estimate. "The only people who will really have any problems," he says, "are the ones who are retrofitting in New Mexico or Florida, because the steel mesh inside the stucco walls interferes with the signal."
Though Intermatic was the first company to offer affordable DIY (do-it-yourself) systems that homeowners can install (the company unveiled HomeSettings more than a year ago), it is no longer alone in the market. This past September, the ZigBee Alliance, a coalition of electronics companies (including Samsung, Honeywell, Mitsubishi and Motorola), held an Open House and Exposition in Chicago to show off gadgets powered by its new technology, including smoke detectors that activate pathway lights leading to exits during a fire and moisture-sensor systems that tell your sprinkler heads when to water the grass. "We incorporated in 2002," says ZigBee Chairman Bob Heile, "and spent a little shy of two years of our existence just completing the technology."
ZigBee's technology uses a mesh network like Z-Wave, but Heile says that it is compatible with a greater number of appliances because it's based on an IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) global standard, like Wi-Fi. He adds that the 2.4-gigahertz frequency also makes it suitable for use worldwide, which reflects the fact that more than half of ZigBee's member companies are in Europe and Asia. In fact, Koreans are already manipulating their homes from afar via cell phone; South Korea Telecom is equipping Motorola phones with ZigBee chips. Only two ZigBee-compliant systems (Tweeter's Control4, retailing for $599, and Eaton's Home Heartbeat, which starts at $129) will be available in the U.S. for the holiday season, but Heile says that the pace should pick up dramatically in 2006. "The Eaton system is basically just a little key fob with a display and sensors," he explains. "But it allows you to open the front door, check the temperature in your hot water heater ... just basically see where your systems are."
Most of these home control devices won't look anything like a computer, he adds. "They'll just come from Home Depot or Wal-Mart, wrapped in a blister pack. You'll stick a little sensor on the wall. They're battery operated, but we made sure we had the best battery technology possible. Once people stick it on the wall, they don't really want to worry about putting batteries in it."
Standardization, Heile says, "is what's going to make a lot of futuristic stuff possible. Down the road, power companies will be able to use radio-controlled meters to even out power-usage peaks and eliminate blackouts. In the long run, it will be ecologically more sound and a lot cheaper."
And a lot more practical. As prices drop and networks become more reliable, smart houses are set to move out of the luxury market and into the mainstream. Both Miller and Noparstak predict that a huge portion of this market will be the elderly or people with disabilities who can use the technology to live independently longer.
The University of Florida's Gator Tech Smart House, a full-scale domestic laboratory, was built last year to explore this application of home automation. Sensors that track a resident's whereabouts, "smart blinds" that automatically open or close depending on internal house temperature and a closet that helps select clothing appropriate to the weather are just a few of its features. While the Gator House technology is far from being available at your local hardware store, the simple plug-in appliance adapters now flowing into the market already have the ability to assist those with limited mobility or mild dementia. Smart house technology is also being used by Orthodox Jewish households to program ovens to Sabbath mode, where food is kept warm but switches remain untouched; and last summer, the BBC reported that future smart homes may help preserve the Earth's finite water resources with dishwashers and washing machines that use sound waves to sonically shake dirt off dishes and clothes.
Although the sound-wave shower is a long way off, the smart house is on the verge of becoming as indispensable as personal computers and cell phones. In fact, Noparstak says devices that allow home computers to control everything in the house are just around the corner; in the next several months, Best Buy will introduce Intermatic's USB stick, which plugs into your computer's USB port and downloads upgrades for your home automation system. "Home automation is growing by leaps and bounds," he says, "because what used to cost millions of dollars is now less than $300 and requires only a module and a controller." So, can we throw away our Clappers now? "Yes," he laughs. "Definitely."
