Make way for the iPad

Home automation is ushering in the era of the remote-controlled house. Some affordable options put the 'Jetsons' lifestyle within reach.

The menu of a Control4 home automation system has options for managing media as well as temperature and lighting. lights, comfort, radio, music, TV and videos. The Control4 system ranges from $3,000 for one room to about $15,000 for the average an entire house. High-end systems range ran from $30,000 to $50,000.
By Joe Robinson
Special to The Times

March 15, 2007

ERICA SALISBURY doesn't like coming home to a shadowy cave at night, and now she doesn't have to. By clicking a mouse from any computer, anywhere, or by triggering a remote sensor, she can illuminate her house like a stadium before reaching the front door.

"The whole house lights up," says the very expectant Porter Ranch mother-to-be, who with husband Ben has made the leap to a digitally integrated home. "That's important for me because I don't like being in the dark."

The Salisburys aren't the only ones leaving the Dark Ages of knobs, dimmers and switches flipped by hand. Thanks to the burgeoning home automation business, couch potatoes can turn up the heat, turn down the AC, shut off an oven, check a security camera and scroll through their DVD or music library without moving a calf muscle. New technology even allows them to personalize these functions from wherever they happen to be via the Web or cellphone, ushering in the era of the house you can take with you. The iPad.

"It's definitely grown," Pat Hurley, tech analyst for Richmond, Va.-based consulting firm TeleChoice, says of the trend, citing the number of businesses entering the field.

"The digital home is absolutely happening," says Will West, chief executive of Control4, the Salt Lake City-based manufacturer of the Salisburys' system. "We can see it in the music we're listening to, we can see it in our televisions, and more devices coming online and into your home."

How does it work? Installers connect your house's electronic and digital devices to a command center, a hard drive that looks like a stereo receiver and can stream music, store movies and manipulate security cameras, among other functions. All can be activated by a remote control, wall keypad, off-site computer (via the Web) or cellphone.

"You don't have to run around to turn on music in each room and all the lights," says Jon Blanchard, who runs Vantage Studio, an audio-video and interior design company in Beverly Hills that installs home automation systems. "It's one button, and you're done."

THE dream of the smart home has teased the popular imagination for years — sci-fi novels, "The Jetsons," the Clapper light switch of as-seen-on-TV fame ("Clap on! Clap off!"). But control-freak nirvana is finally attainable with new Wi-Fi technology that makes it affordable for someone other than a potentate or marquis in good standing.

Until recently, the price tag for home automation systems ranged from $30,000 to $50,000 and kept the industry stagnant, says Kurt Scherf, a market researcher at Dallas-based Parks Associates, which studies emerging technologies.

These days, a slew of companies such as Control4 are automating homes for $3,000 to $15,000. Best Buy has rolled out a $15,000 system called ConnectedLife.Home, which allows you to manage light switches, the thermostat and security cameras by remote control on a high-definition TV. Motorola's Homesight and AT&T's Remote Monitor allow you to view video, monitor door and window sensors or turn on lights from a Web-enabled phone.

No wonder the home automation business is expected to double in sales to nearly $6 billion in the next four years, according to Scherf.

For those already drowning in a flood of unread user manuals for digital devices, the prospect of a total tech home invasion may prompt plans for padded walls. Many of us, after all, would rather have a root canal than program our TiVos (or for true luddites, the VCRs). The biggest challenge of the smart home may be the dumb way user interfaces have been designed.

"Ease of use is still the major issue for most of the technology we write about," says industry analyst Hurley, coauthor of "Smart Homes for Dummies."

Usability was a prime concern at the Salisbury house. The couple had seen friends and family struggle with the complexity of expensive systems, so they wanted something affordable that they could use without a live-in Nobel laureate engineer.

In the living room of their new home in the hills north of the San Fernando Valley, Erica and Ben demonstrate their system with a single Control4 remote. If you mess up, the red "4" button takes you back to the main menu.

The opening screen looks decipherable enough — a few icons float on the couple's 63-inch plasma TV screen — Lights, Comfort, Videos, TV, Music. "Everything's right there," says Ben, who runs a real estate company. "I go to music, hit that. Then all the albums come up and I just pick one."

The media features will be familiar to anyone with an iPod. Ben can choose individual songs or highlight an album and start playing it. He can also build playlists. He clicks on an album cover, and the Goo Goo Dolls are instantly rocking the house. He can add other rooms in which he wants the music to play or have the sound rumble from all speakers.

The movie interface is equally logical and a big selling point for Ben. Now he doesn't have to mount a search party every time he wants to find a film from his collection of 500 titles. The command center functions as a home theater library for his movies, organized by genre — comedy, action —and even by director.

"I watch stuff and listen to stuff more now because it's up there, as opposed to having to go find it on my rack," he says.

Asked to demonstrate how to dim the kitchen lights, however, Erica tries gamely but gets stumped on where to go.

"I have to be honest, I don't use the light function that often," she says, laughing.

It turns out she doesn't need the plasma display anyway. She can control any light from her remote control or touch panels scattered around the house. Or from a computer. Matt McKenna, owner of Semaphoric Smart Homes, which did the installation and programming for the home, turns down the kitchen lights and adjusts the temperature in the room from his laptop.

"They could be doing this from New York," McKenna says. "It gives you full control of all functions you have in your house online."

McKenna worked with the couple to preprogram their lighting needs, including customized "scenes," one of the more popular features that allows homeowners to create various lighting moods for, say, entertaining, watching movies or romance. Installation costs are kept down by new light fixtures that can be dimmed wirelessly, so there's no need to tear out walls for rewiring.

The remote-controlled home also provides a formidable batch of new options for security and safety, so you can even monitor what's up with your pets. You can set lights to turn on and off randomly to simulate someone at home while you're out for the night or on vacation.

Sensors as well as cameras can be attached to doors and windows to monitor entry. Some systems can fire off an e-mail with every coming and going.

West may be on to a handy application for parents. "I get an e-mail when my 18-year-old daughter gets home at night," he says. "If my wife weren't at home, I'd want to get an e-mail by 4 o'clock if my kids weren't home from school."

As workweeks and commutes grow longer, the potential of home automation could become more important. Busy people could track the whereabouts of kids, pets or elderly parents. The iPad may also turn out to have serious environmental appeal.

"I think what's going to drive it is energy management and the greening of homes," Hurley says. "It can help people cut power bills." Some cities are already starting to require that homeowners have systems for monitoring rainfall or temperature to prevent excessive lawn watering.

STILL, the most compelling lure may be that favorite of all energy-saving tools: any device that keeps humans from having to budge an inch more than need be. It's Newton's law of inertia: A body at rest stays at rest. This is particularly true for bodies at rest with a remote atop a sofa or bed.

"It just makes it easier," Ben Salisbury says. "I don't have to go over and grab five remotes. If you're lying in bed and reading, all you have to do is grab the remote and turn the lights off. Just to be able to reach over to the nightstand and grab this as opposed to having to get up and turn the heater off or the lights, is great."

Adds Erica: "It sounds like I'm being lazy, but do we ever want to get out of bed once we're comfortable?"

Absolute remote control controls absolutely.

Leaving it all to the experts: smart move

IT'S probably no surprise that the smart home requires more than a hard drive plugged into the wall. Manufacturers of home automation products sell the gear largely through independent dealers, often audio-video specialists working in the home theater arena who have the expertise to install and customize the programming.

"We ask the customer, when you get home, what do you want to have happen?" says Jon Blanchard of Vantage Studio in Beverly Hills. "Some people want the lights to turn on, some people want to also start some music and maybe the TV in the kitchen. The possibilities are endless."

Costs depend on how many rooms of the house you connect and what automation systems you use. Semaphoric Smart Homes' base system from Control4 runs $3,000, says Semaphoric owner Matt McKenna, whose business card reads "Systems Engineer" and not "CEO" to underscore the essential tech credentials. That price automates one room, all media and lights.

Expanding control throughout the house, as the Salisburys did, brings the total for a Control4 system to around $15,000, which is the same as the cost of Best Buy's ConnectedLife.Home, including installation. That's well below the $35,000 to $50,000 price tags for systems of top-end companies Crestron and AMX, whose proprietary technology keeps costs higher. Crestron, however, is marketing a lower-priced, more user-friendly system called Adagio for around $14,000 that has won good reviews on a few tech websites.

Seattle software company Lagotek has entered the game with a wireless product that it says can lower energy costs by a third with its climate controls. Price: $8,500 for a 4,000-square-foot home.

In your search for total control, Troy Bolotnick of Bolovision Digital Systems in Westwood advises going with a system that can be upgraded easily, has a long life, is easy to use and is reliable. "You want something that's been around for a while," he says.