What is Home Automation?
Residential automation is all about adding comfort, convenience, security, and energy savings to your lifestyle.  It is the remote and automatic control of your home's systems such as lighting, appliances, heating and air conditioning, entertainment components, security system, communications, irrigation system, pool and spa, and all of the other systems in your home.  These systems become easier to use, and any level of automation can be installed.

Automation is about making your home work for you, saving you time, and simplifying your life.  It can be as simple as automatic control of outside security lights that come on at dusk and shut off at dawn.  Or your home's exterior and interior lights, and your stereo, can all come on for you when you signal your garage door to open, so you don't ever have to enter a dark house again.  Or it can be as sophisticated as having all of the systems in your entire home automatically controlled according to time of day, day of week, or personal presence in a room, and with voice control, too.  Remote and automatic lighting control, heating and air conditioning control, and drapery control are very popular tools for realizing significant energy savings as well as convenience.  And of course security is also an important part of automating your home.
Imagine ...

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Your routine is suddenly much more convenient with an automated home. As you leave your home in the morning, you push one button by the front door and all lights and appliances are turned off, the stereo or TV shuts down, the draperies close, hair curlers turn off, the thermostat and water heater are set to economy mode, and your security system knows to enable in two minutes. Your home has just automatically dialed your secretary to let her know you are on your way. While driving to your office, you remember you wanted to water the yard one extra time this week, so you dial your home and tell it to turn on the sprinkler system for fifteen minutes.

After lunch, you'll go on-line at your desk to view your back yard to be sure your dog is keeping out of mischief. On your drive home you decide to take a soak in the Jacuzzi, so a quick cell phone call to your home has the tub hot and steamy for you.

Later that evening, after settling down in your favorite easy chair, and tell your house "It's movie time!", and watch as the lights are dimmed, curtains drawn, projection screen unfurled, video projector and DVD player enables, phone mutes and the popcorn popper fires up. It's movie time! And you know that your connected home is also capable of sending the same DVD movie signal to any of the other TV's or computers in your home. While you are watching, you hear a noise in the front yard, so you click channel 84 on your viewing screen to bring up a security video image of a stray dog running by your front door.

After the movie, you settle down for th night and again one button push or a voice command puts your home to work for you by turning off all interior lights, turning on security lights, shutting down all entertainment components and appliances, setting the thermostat and water heater to economy mode, and enabling the security system. You rest comfortably knowing that in the event of a fire or other emergency, you and your children are safe. Your home knows what to do ... automatically!

Call it home automation, home control, smart home or digital home, what you get is comfort, convenience, security, and energy savings...and it's affordable.