Intelligent Living

Imagine. If you are building a new home or extending an existing one, are you network enabled? I only ask because life as we know it is about to change. Eventually most homes will be controlled by a computer centre that will entertain, keep us safe, anticipate our latest domestic problems and generally organise our home existence through a computer nerve centre networked throughout the house. Sounds like science fiction, doesn’t it?

Well, Bill Gates has called the period between 2002 and 2012 the “digital decade for consumers”. If you are still wowed by fuzzy logic in the washing machine, you are going to love what the next ten years has to offer. Imagine a home that can call the gardaí if it gets nervous, organise its own shopping list when things get a little scanty in the fridge and communicate with you at work.

Sleeping technology

These advances in lifestyle technology have put a sly toe into many of our homes in the shape of a home computer. However, the computer as it stands at the moment, is still isolated in a corner of one room,

self-serving and separated from all our other electrical appliances.

Microsoft is already poised to take control of your entire living space, and they have launched a whole new division called eHome, based on what is called “convergence technologies”.

The new iMac has been marketed as a “digital hub”, a promise of things to come, as soon that diminutive little box could be sleekly running your whole corporeal life. Both Macintosh and Microsoft have already installed “dormant” programmes in their latest operating systems such as XP, and they are ready to come to life when we are ready to cope with the reality of a fully digital home.

Playing unplugged

The first step towards the intelligent house that most of us will probably notice will be the computer based advance of wireless networking. This allows computers to communicate with each other within the house without any intrusive cables.

Macintosh is already selling an elegant little ball that looks for all the world like a rather attractive paperweight called the Air-port. The Air-port when placed between two PC’s transmits a wireless signal that can connect a computer to the Internet or transmit documents from another machine. In other words you can slouch on the couch and surf the ‘Net without power or a telephone line.

Microsoft are determined to champion the fully integrated home, and their Freestyle technologies will allow us to use all the multimedia wizardry now confined to our PC screen on the television screen via the Freestyle remote.

The digital home awakes

What does all this have to do with a pantry that knows its contents or a window that closes when it rains? Well, everything. This is one machine virtually “talking” to another and it’s the first step towards all our electrical gadgetry talking to itself in one home based digital network. If an appliance is plugged in, your home network will “know”, and if there is a fault, for example, in the central heating boiler or a leak in the fridge, the appliance can alert the network and access outside help by sending an e-mail though your ISDN cable to the service centre for that appliance! If the oil tank is low, the tank can call your supplier for a refill.

This kind of virtual intelligence might sound like sheer convenience, but if the problem is something as serious as a carbon monoxide leak from a boiler, an alert of this kind might prove a lifesaver. Home security companies were some of the first manufacturers to see the advantage of an automatic link to the outside world and this is likely to become more refined. With every light switch and door-hinge part of a digital circuit, any unusual activity in the house can be relayed to a security firm or pulled up as an image on your computer at work. With streamed LCD displays now super-flat, any surface including the door of the microwave, can serve as a display screen for computing and entertainment.

Phone home

The much beloved mobile phone or electronic leash will connect us more closely with home and link us to an even greater web of information that will make everyday shopping a seamless experience.

One idea vaunted by the Virtual Interdisciplinary Research Centre in the UK, sees the mobile as metamorphosising into a PDA or personal digital assistant. If you are shopping for a particular item, your mobile phone will ring as you pass a shop stocking that item and you can call the fridge for a rundown of its contents and a suggestion of what you could make or should pick up before your return!

Good foundations

Here in Ireland, enlightened electricians and a few key companies such as Smarthomes.ie (www.smarthomes.ie 042-9376678) are already addressing the inevitable impact of home networking in the design of new homes. Frank Mooney of IP Homenet and a regular contributor to International Smart House magazine in the UK urges builders and home owners to consider making necessary provision today for home networking tomorrow. He recommends the installation of two Cat 5e cable outlets beside any 13-amp socket and four Cat 5e outlets in the main entertainment areas such as the sitting room or lounge of all new homes. This allows the home owner to install a telephone and computer linked to a central console in every room as well as being fully prepared for the full home networking experience to come. When it comes to running cables in a retro-fit, and wireless technology too, a stud wall will take wireless transmission with greater ease than its concrete-built cousin. Conduit friendly skirting boards and architrave that can simply snap off to discreetly accommodate cables is an idea gleaned from the US that might provide a solution to accommodating exciting 21st technology in a 19th or 20th century home.