HAL in the house

Imagine turning on your lights, opening your blinds or firing up your heater without getting up from your chair. It used to be that things like these could only happen in movies, but now there is a touch-screen remote control you can use to activate home appliances.

You can even turn on an underfloor heating system or the oven in your kitchen via a call from your cell telephone or a message sent over the Internet. Welcome to the smart home.

The good news for the technophobes among us is that the smart home is surprisingly user friendly. People who love aesthetics will be pleased with the disappearance of visible switches on home appliances and environmentalists will dig saving electricity with dimmers that double the life of a light bulb.

The best thing about the new systems, however, is that they make our lives easier and more convenient. In this age of technology, when our homes are filled with remote control devices that are constantly being misplaced and joined by more such devices as we buy more remote controlled appliances, we need someone or something just to keep them all in order.

The smart home system does just that, and demand for such systems is gaining momentum in many countries around the world.

Yossi Gol, CEO of Top Audio, designs and installs smart systems and says that Israelis are among the top consumers of this new technology.

Wired or wireless

Whether you are a gadget-lover and "need" a smart home system, or you find the idea amusing but are not sure it is for you, here are a few practical tips:

A smart home system lets you control all the electrical circuits in your home: light, underfloor heating, electric window blinds, burglar alarm, air conditioning, and even the various components of your home entertainment system. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination and your budget.

There are two main methods for installing a smart home system: with wires, for people building or renovating their homes, or wireless, which have been available in Israel for about two years, under the Control4 brand, imported by SG Electronics.

While a wireless system removes the need to cut into any walls, they are more prone to malfunctions than wired systems, and the moment something goes wrong, your hands-free home requires all hands on deck.

As home automation systems become more popular, more companies are offering their services. How can you know who to choose? As with many other big ticket items, the established brands have better reputations and good quality products.

Still, since this is a relatively new industry that still lacks clear standards, warrantees and service are the name of the game.

Top Audio, for example, has customer service personnel on standby duty on weekends, to answer clients' questions.

Also, since hooking up your audio and video systems to a remote control device has a significant effect on your entertainment experience, it's best to choose a company with expertise in this field too.

The option of trying out a system before pulling out your credit card is important, too, so that you won't get home and not know how to turn on the lights. Newpan Pro, for example, has a display area built to resemble a kitchen, living room and family room, and customers can try out a full-fledged system to experience how user friendly it is and see how everything works.

Paying for the future

The cost of an all-inclusive system in one common area of a home (the kitchen-living room), offering control of the lights, air conditioning and audio-video devices, starts at NIS 8,000. Connecting each additional plug point to the wireless system costs NIS 150. A basic wired system for a 5-room home - including control of the lights, blinds and water heater - starts at NIS 20,000 (including planning, equipment and installation), not including the electrician's fee. Since a wired system is installed as part of construction or renovations, which require an electrician anyway, the basic guideline is that the wiring for the smart home system will increase the cost of the electrical work by 20%-30%.

Many developers see the smart home as an integral part of modern living, so many new projects in Israel, including luxury high-rises, are planned with smart home systems, increasing the value of the home.

Over the next few years smart homes will become part of high quality new construction and importers say this will slowly bring prices down for the general public.

In the meantime smart home systems that extend to every room are quite expensive and are considered a sophisticated toy for the rich. It is therefore not surprising that the more exotic functions are attracting most of the attention and are used as a marketing tool.

Alon Laski, CEO of Newpan Pro, talks about a biometric system that can identify which family member is holding the remote control and will adjust the system based on that person's predefined tastes. If a child is holding the remote, for example, the television will switch to a children's channel and the adult program stations will be locked.

There is also a "thief" setting. If a member of the household suspects an intruder has entered the home, pressing the "thief" button turns on all the lights and TVs and raises the blinds.