Your Home is in Your Hands

I would like to tell you about a magic home. You or your children have bought a home and fixed it up very nicely. The parquet floors shine brightly, beautiful crystal chandeliers create a special atmosphere inside while fancy landscaping, decorative fountains and waterfalls create an atmosphere outside. Garage door opens to let you out to work in the morning. There is nobody home. Everybody is gone for the day. The house is empty. But you forgot to turn off the light or close the garage door. Turning around and coming back Home is not an option...

As you can probably guess, I have never been at Bill Gates' home. And probably I will never be there either... But all of us, you and I, have read something or heard something about his house. It is of course a large and beautiful house. And of course it is fully programmed and computerized. Most likely we will never be able to afford such a Home. But you too could have a computerized Home. For some it may simply mean the ability to turn off the forgotten lights or stove from great distance. For others it may be the audio-visual system they always wanted, surround sound, equipment hidden in the walls, larger than life plasma screens attached straight to the walls, sound dimming out automatically when a phone rings and other such incredible entertainment possibilities. For some it means utilizing state of the art motion detectors and independent power supply hidden cameras that start rolling and call your Cell Phone number with a coded message if anything larger than a cat starts moving in the house to create security at home for their property, for themselves, for their family and their children. For others, it means the ability to gather all these possibilities together and create a truly smart home, and a fully secure Home, responsive to their slightest wish.

All these things are fully within the current technological capabilities, they are not difficult to accomplish, they are not even expensive. They are only limited by your imagination. Whatever Home automation you can imagine is possible to bring to life at your Home.

Forgot to turn off the lights? Your son or doughter forgot their Home keys and are locked out of the house? No problem. Just dial up a command on your computer or Cell Phone and your beloved but ever so forgetful child gains an entrance to the house. Do you think your ever so forgetful child remembered to lock the door? Don't even worry about it. You will lock it yourself without missing a beat at work, all under the affectionate gaze of your favorite boss.

Hawaii! The beach, sun, no worries! Is that so? Are you not concerned about the safety of your Home while you are away? Is the frig still working? Are the sprinklers sprinkling on time? Is your cat's autofeeder still operational or is your cat now starving? Needless to say, all of this could be in your hands. You just call a code from your Cell Phone and the smart house will do the rest.

And what about the home security while you are away? Don't we all ask our neighbors to collect the mail out of our mailbox and pick up the newspapers laying in front of the house? Don't we all have lights on timers to create an illusion that we are Home? Nowadays it is done with a laptop or a Cell Phone. Anybody watching the house would see the curtains closing at night, lights and