For some it may be something as simple as remote or automatic control of a few lights. For others, security may be the central application. Still others may choose to install advanced controllers or use voice recognition. As a very basic definition, we tend to refer to home automation as anything that gives you remote or automatic control of things around the home.
What cost is home automation?
Most home owners already have some form of home automation without even realising it. So the cost was when purchasing the equipment like your HIFI with a remote control or TV, DVD, Digital box, Sky box, Games console, Fire, Lighting, Air conditioning, Fans all with remote control and so much more. The cost of the automation {Remote control} is incorporated in the purchase price. Then the are more specialised items like whole house audio/visual systems heating control curtain/blind control lighting and power control and even electric window tinting control.or as somple as turning the fish pond pump on/off . The cost of automating your home is depending on your budget some simple things can be incorporated for as little as £30 or Full average home with Audio, visual and computer in all rooms? Automated lighting, blinds, security CCTV and temperature, All centrally controlled? You are looking at £18,000 to £25,000 depending on speciforcations
For years there have been predictions about just what 21st-century living would be like. Robots as house help, anyone? Hover cars and holidays on the moon? Well, only the robot cleaners are anywhere near arriving, but the "smart home" — technology designed to make home life simpler, more luxurious and more efficient — certainly has.
Plasma and LCD screens, broadband internet and wireless connectivity have become mainstream, while technology more often associated with millionaires' row — remote-controlled gates, CCTV, home cinemas, and the like — is slipping into ordinary city flats, traditional country piles and suburban semis. Britain is embracing a Jetsons lifestyle.
So what is smart technology — or rather, what can smart technology do for you? The answer is many, many things. It is being able to use your (hands-free) mobile phone while driving home from work to run a bath that will be ready the second you walk through the door; it is getting up in the morning, pressing a button next to your bed and having the shower already running — at the perfect temperature — by the time you reach the bathroom. It is pressing another button and watching your lights slowly ramp up to a level you have preset, so there's no stumbling around a dark house on a bleak, wintry morning.
Was that the door bell? Check who is outside on your nearest LCD screen, which has come on automatically to show you. Forget about fumbling in that messy handbag for your door keys: the lock is activated by your fingerprint or iris. Scan the bar codes of food going into your high-tech refrigerator before discarding wrapping — your next shopping list is compiled.
No more dashing for a cuppa during commercial breaks to avoid missing a scene of your favourite soap: flatscreens in every room mean you won't miss a second. Imagine having broadband internet, all your television channels — digital, Sky and terrestrial — all your films and your entire music collection in every room. That music is playing from invisible speakers, buried in the plaster of the walls.
World at their fingertips
Adam Kent's 7,500sq ft home, outside Solihull in the West Midlands, which he shares with his girlfriend, Vikki Abrahard, 29, and his three children, Faye, 11, Isabelle, 9, and Luke, 8, looks like a traditional country pile.
Inside, however, its 28 rooms, including six bedrooms, six bathrooms and three cinemas, have huge plasma screens and multiple lighting circuits. Films and music tracks are downloaded onto a hard drive and distributed with radio, TV and the internet to every room.
"I can start watching a DVD in the cinema room, press pause, go to the bathroom, watch half-an-hour in the bath, press pause and finish watching in the bedroom," says Kent, 43. He spent more than £100,000 "smartening" up his home.
He can also control the property from anywhere in the world, via the internet or a mobile phone.
"If we're all eating in the kitchen, one press of a button or click of a remote can immediately switch off all the other lights," he says. "So bedroom lights are not left burning because the kids keep forgetting to switch them off."
Lighting moods can be preset; the couple have "romantic", "reading" and "chill" levels, for example. A button by the front door automatically activates the lights the family normally use each evening.
If one of them is coming home to an empty house, they can text ahead to put on the lights, heating or air-conditioning. Sensors installed in the ceiling and walls mean that at night, if anyone gets up, dim lights turn on automatically.
Smart home technology really comes into its own when it comes to home security, and the set-up at Kent's home is a good example of how improved it can be. For a start, there are some 16 CCTV cameras. If the family are planning a holiday, a setting for lights and curtains monitors their routine for a fortnight and then mimics it while they are away. Kent is contacted — anywhere in the world — if the doorbell is pressed, and he can transmit a voice response, so it sounds as though he's home.
Kent says his children are better at operating the controls than he is — and he's a professional.
"They love it," he says. "My 11-year-old daughter loves being able to listen to her music anywhere in the house." Smart technology means other family members can listen to what they like as well: more than 2,000 CDs are loaded onto the music system, and different music can be heard throughout the house at the same time. "And they all love having friends over to the cinema rooms," says their father.
The children's televisions are controlled by him, so he can determine exactly how much television — and what programmes — they are allowed to watch.
Dawdling in bed on a school morning is also impossible: a button in the master bedroom lets him turn on the children's bedroom lights and radios and open their curtains — from the comfort of his own bed. Now that really is parental control.
Get the look
- Three Multi Room 248-Zone Xantech MRC88 multi-room controllers (£4,550 each)
- Ten 6.4V Xantech LCD touch screens (£1,930 each); 12 x standard panels (£208 each); one waterpad, (£425)
- One Samsung IQ tablet PC/controller with automation software (£999)
- One LCD 4 monitor screen in rack, (£995); two AV racks (£750 each)
- Cinema AV receivers: One Yamaha RXV 2700 cinema AV receiver, one Yamaha 1700, one Yamaha AX757 (£450 each)
- TruAudio speakers (£70 a pair)
- One Xmusic Imerge 4 Source music server (£1,360-£3,320)
- One HD distribution Kramer VP88 (£1,699); three SKYSky HDsHDs
- Two Panasonic TH-42PHD8BS screens (£995 each); one Sony KDF-E50 (£800); one LG 32in LC2D, (£799); three LG 19in screens (£199 each); two Sony 17in screens (, £299 each)
- Three TileVision bathroom televisions (£1,200 each)
- Security: One Telestial 16-camera DVR CCTV system (£799); nine cameras, (£80-£900 each)
- OtherEpson TW500 Projecter (£795)
- Nevo SL and MX3000 remote controls,Telestial Vista Media Server/Clients, Sony XL1B 200 DVD changer, (£999)
- Lighting: Helvar Imagine lighting system with 152 circuits (from £60 a circuit)
There is more to Adam Kent's home than meets the eye
Smart homes are still expensive. But some items are becoming more affordable, and the benefits could encourage more people to turn their dreams into reality, finds Dan Simmons at the Smart Home Show in Birmingham.
Adam Kent's country house may look quaint, but it could not be described as old-fashioned.
Mr Kent, who runs a business providing the latest smart home technology, has spent the last two-and-a-half years packing as much of it as he can into his own 28-room crib.
"The key thing with every room is that it is controlled by a panel," he says.
"So each of the rooms has got one in, and this allows you to control all of the devices that are connected to the magic boxes.
"We have a couple of satellite boxes, DVD, music, even CCTV."
The panels, which can be controlled remotely, are expensive at more than £1,000 each.
The perfect smart home is not just about the gizmos; it is also about looking the part.
Mr Kent has used a false wall to hide the cables, recess the plasma and house the speakers. So, if you do not mind getting the builders in and losing a little floor space, it is a beautiful solution.
Let there be light
With 28 rooms, you would expect the lighting bill to be expensive but Mr Kent says smart home technology takes care of this.
Three boxes in the control room are the hub of the system
For example, in the room with the plasma television, the first call for lighting is for the LEDs, he says.
"They are ideal for watching the TV, and the best bit is that they are only four or five watts.
"If we need any more light then you just select one of the settings. 'Romantic' will be 10% and 'chilled' may be 15%."
Mr Kent's lighting software can even predict where he might go next and turns the lights on using the motion sensors in the ceiling.
He has chosen to hardwire the system to guarantee the connections rather than relying on a wireless setup.
Each panel in the house, as well as the lighting, comes back to three boxes situated in the control room which is "where it all happens".
"Each of these boxes controls eight rooms. In a conventional house you would probably only have one in here. We have three.
"They are about £4,000 to £4,500 each but that gives you the whole infrastructure for a property."
And the rest of the system can be made from equipment that is not so hi-tech, says Mr Kent.
A plasma that could be stored in a fireplace was on display at the show
"The whole beauty of this is that you can use the equipment that you have already got in the property.
"For example, we have got two satellite boxes, we have got a music server, DVD and three surround-sound amps.
"But there are three cinema rooms in here. Again, conventionally, you would probably only have one."
He adds: "What you are giving yourself is the ability to share and control all of the equipment in this cabinet from any room."
The cupboard next door houses the lighting circuit boards and it is worth pointing out that each dimmable circuit in the house cost Mr Kent £250.
Smart entertainment
Mr Kent's children - Faye, Isabelle, and Luke - love the big screens in the three cinema rooms.
At the show was a heat-resistant, waterproof LCD for the bathroom
Ideally, you need wall space and a high ceiling to store the digital projector. Prices for these have dropped considerably in the last two years, and at around £1,000 a set-up could cost less than a large plasma or LCD screen.
The speakers in the ceiling also create a sense of space.
Alternatively you could get rid of the speakers altogether and have the sound coming straight from the walls.
Back at the Smart Home Show in Birmingham's NEC, a mock up uses a series of tiny but powerful speakers which dissipate the sound across the entire wall surface which is made up of a special mesh. The result is surprisingly good.
The cost of £5,000 to wire up a small room is not cheap and you will need four hollow walls.
How about storing your plasma in your fireplace? The screen is protected from the heat so when it is down you can stay warm. Again, wires are hidden and it means the TV does not dominate the room. The fireplace does that instead.
Wireless limitations
In the perfect smart home anything and everything can be controlled at the touch of a button.
But the advice from many at the show was not to connect the button to a PC. Serious smart homes should not crash, catch a virus or go wandering off to the internet to get software updates.
Yours for only £1,900 - a mirror which is also a TV
And the fashion of wireless technologies for a whole home was thought unreliable, too; as Gary Cunningham from Sensory International explains.
"We are nearly there with wireless, but I think we are a couple of years away from wireless being the complete everything that we need for doing the entire house. I think that at this moment in time, for a single room, wireless is fine.
"One of the major issues for wireless is data drop-out, which is not so bad on video and audio as we can use a little bit of buffer time then.
"But if we are using a security system, the possibility of losing data could corrupt our system and make it useless."
For £1,200, you can fit your bathroom with low-voltage sealed panels and a heat-resistant, waterproof LCD.
Another addition to the bathroom suite is a £1,900 mirror which is also a TV. And there is an amazing mirror plasma for £4,000.
Or how about a TV towel rail for £2,500? And to round off the visual spectacle, simply plug in your camera's memory card to a digital picture frame, from £550.
Mr Kent does not have a mirrored plasma hanging over his bed but he does have something to keep the kids in order, he says.
"You know what it's like trying to get the kids to bed. From the bedroom, not only can I switch off whatever television they are watching, I can also switch off the lights."
However much the gadgets themselves may cost, total control over your home and kids is surely priceless.
Now have a look at some video taken from The Gadget Show and the BBC Click program
