Articles and whitepapers

29/8/2003

Intelligent Homes - What's Possible

By Jonathan Margolis

In the fledgling years of the 21st century, the intelligent home is, at last, here in a big way. In the US, an estimated US$27 billion a year will be spent on smart domestic technology by 2005. And Datamonitor, the market analysts, predict that by 2005, around 20 million households in Europe should benefit from networked technology. In Britain, too, electronic architecture is booming. The Ideal Home Exhibition recently featured an intelligent home exhibit, and on the high streets of the UK, companies are now busy on a daily basis, automating and integrating homes ranging from new houses on mid-priced estates to housing for the disabled, to millionaire mansions.

discreet in-ceiling speakers

In keeping with the custom installation ethic of concealing the working parts of even the most sophisticated house-machine, most of these intelligent home experts are not immediately obvious as part of the street scene - they usually appear on the street as the better kind of hi-fi shop. Other custom installers do not even have a shop premises, but work from industrial park units.

As might be guessed from the number of hi-fi dealers that have branched into custom installation, entertainment is at the heart of the intelligent house movement, and equally at the core of most intelligent house installations. And it is the 'whole house' entertainment system is causing the biggest stir in home entertainment since the introduction of the television fifty years ago.

Multiroom Video

The most basic system will revolutionise the way you experience home entertainment. The installer will integrate your living room's cable box and video equipment so that you can enjoy this setup wherever you have a TV in the house. This is made possible by the installation of an RF (Radio Frequency) distribution system, which carries TV and video signals around the house. That means you can enjoy the benefits of one system, without having to install unsightly extra cable units or VCRs.

Multiroon Audio

The same network system can then be applied to your hi-fi. A multiroom audio system can give you the benefit of being able to listen to music wherever you are in the house, without the clutter and disruption of separate stereos in every room. All the homeowner needs is a 'controller' and source equipment, such as a CD player and tuner. The controller distributes audio signals to a specified number of 'zones' in the home, allowing you to hear and control the stereo from any zone.

wall-mounted keypad for audio selection and control

Each zone has a wall-mounted keypad, roughly the size of a double-gang switch plate, which lets the owner choose whether he or she wants to listen to the radio or CD player, turn the volume up or down, or change the CD that is playing. Additionally, you may choose to have portable control pads, which are like TV remotes, only bigger and with a colour screen.

If you use a high capacity CD changer (holding maybe 200 CDs) or, as is becoming more popular, a hard disk-based server to store your music on, you need not worry about changing discs. When all the CDs (and Internet MP3 files) are loaded in, you can select a specific album or let the player skip randomly from one to another. Also, by categorising the discs into various genres, you can specify the ambience for a romantic night in or a lively dinner party.

Cabling and speakers are, of course, neatly hidden from view, discreetly mounted in walls and ceilings. Unlike traditional setups, a whole house entertainment system will not disrupt the aesthetic of your home. There is a whole new science around what is known as the architectural loudspeaker - speakers with full high-end hi-fi abilities that hide flush with the plasterwork. The idea of liberating space, as well as time, is another core value of the intelligent house.

Security

Security is another enormous draw for those contemplating an intelligent house installation. An installer can put in a home lighting controller to record all the times you switch lights on and off in a twenty-four hour period, and replay them when you are away - opening and closing your curtains and blinds, and switching TVs and radios on and off too, for dramatic effect.

monitoring security through the TV set

When you are at home, you can check on your holiday cottage by having a remote camera send images to you via a high-speed data line. And when you pop out, why not lock all the doors and windows at once with a central locking system? You expect it on a car - it is remarkable that it is not yet standard in a house.

Talking to your home

Talking to your home is possible too, with new software available in the US. In an early experiment in voice recognition, one installer in Florida has made it possible for the householder to turn off his security system from his car phone, and tell his system, once he is home, to turn on the lights and run a bath. Voice recognition also promises the possibility of using the phone to order your kitchen to have a meal cooked by a certain time.

Smart devices

Food-wise, the intelligent home is also being enhanced increasingly by Internet fridges, which will re-order food, warn you of items past their sell-by date and suggest recipes with the scraps you have that have not expired. Or you could have your wine requisites looked after by a wine cellar that nags you, via e-mail, when a bottle could do with turning or is getting ready for drinking.

The smart bedroom of the near future should ensure quiet nights. One Canadian company is marketing a £6000 rotating bed that spins through 180 degrees so you can face the TV or swivel round to catch a view you like, or a light you prefer to read by. The intelligent house can look after you when you wake up, too. The coffee machine can be set to spring into life to wake you up, having earlier prompted the oven to bake the bread rolls and croissants. For your morning bath, the desired temperature, water quantity, and your favourite combination of bath oils can all be set automatically. Or you could splash out on the latest £15,000 luxury bath that comes with a flat-screen TV, DVD/CD player and floating remote control.

Housework? Why worry? With smart devices that can track grocery lists and clean the house through a centralised vacuum system. White-good manufacturers have introduced dryers that sense when clothes are dry, and what is called a Personal Valet Clothes Vitalizing System - a closet that it claims can de-wrinkle clothes in about half an hour, using a heat-activated detergent and no water.

concealed speaker in the garden

The garden can be tended by an ever increasing range of robotic lawn mowers, some solar-powered, and by flowerbed watering systems that sense when the soil is dry. And health can be overseen by toilets currently on display in Japan that record blood pressure, weight, body fat and urine sugar, and can zap the data to doctors.

Smart and personal

A further key attraction of the intelligent house is its inherent open-ended nature. The technology is now sufficiently evolved for you to customise to whatever degree you choose. One CEDIA (Custom Electronic Design and Installation) installer for example, working on a home in Liverpool was given a specific problem by the owner: he wanted to listen to Radio 4 wherever he went in the house or when he was getting up in the morning. But at the same time, he did not want the entire house to reverberate to the Today programme. That would, he felt, be too noisy and intrusive on other members of his family. He also did not want to have to fiddle with touch pads as he busied himself from bedroom to shower to home gym to kitchen to hall. The solution was a 'follow-me' system, that sensed where he was and ensured Radio 4 was on quietly in that location only, switching it off immediately he left the room.

You are probably thinking that you have to be a multi-millionaire to own such an elaborate setup. But the reality can be quite different. Making your home intelligent can cost from a few thousand pounds to half a million. There is, as practitioners in this field point out, no real top limit nor any constriction, other than ingenuity and imagination as to what gizmos a house can be fitted with.

Jonathan Margolis is a freelance journalist for national papers such as the FT, Mirror etc.

This article appears courtesy of CEDIA UK (Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association).

www.cedia.co.uk