The world at your fingertips

Press of a button is the wave of the not-so-distant future

By Rhonda Stewart, Globe Staff  |  January 6, 2005

Most people start their day with the touch of a button -- the snooze button, that is. But imagine being able to press a button that would simultaneously turn the lights on in your kitchen, start warming the room, begin brewing coffee, and turn on the TV morning news.

This may sound like a scenario from the distant future, but such technology, and others like it, is already available. Networked homes tend to conjure images of a sleek, impersonal techno-fortress or machines going haywire and turning against their owners. But the latest home networking products are designed to improve safety, convenience, and energy efficiency.

The demand for these technologies is growing, with the market projected to be $4 billion by 2008, according to ABI Research, a New York-based technology research firm. Many of these products are being introduced today at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

As new products arrive, companies are mindful that with rapid technological changes, what's hot today can seem outdated within months.

Until recently, products for networked homes might have been available only to those willing to pay large sums to have them installed. But the current devices are increasingly affordable and appealing to the do-it-yourself market.

Networked homes aren't just about bringing technology to the home but sometimes literally building technology into it.

Mike Rosen, a Philadelphia architect, designed the NextGen Home, which brings together a vast array of networked products under one roof. A NextGen Home will be on display in Las Vegas at CES and another will be shown at the International Builders' Show in Orlando the following week.

But Rosen has also developed a product for the NextGen Home called CoreWall, which puts all of a home's central systems -- plumbing, lighting, heating, electrical, computer mainframe -- inside one wall of the house. The wall is custom made and shipped to the site. Once it's installed, all of those systems are ready to go.

Rosen says homeowners could save 15 percent to 20 percent in costs by reducing the amount of pipes and wiring they need.

"CoreWall is essentially architecture flipped on its head. Normally you design a home to fit the needs of the homeowner or the client and technology is woven in," Rosen says. "What we did with CoreWall was ask the question, What if you designed a house that revolved around technology?"

As the idea of a networked home becomes more popular, more homeowners may start asking themselves the samething.

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This news arrived on: 01/06/2005