Home sweet command center

The Democrat and Chronicle
By Amy Wu

(May 20, 2006) — Heather Ralph's Pittsford house is a hotbed of high tech.

In the kitchen sits the sleek iMac G5, which flashes the family's color-coded calendar and schedules.

At breakfast, Ralph's husband, Steve, reads the newspaper on the computer. Ralph trolls through the online phone book when looking for numbers.

The computer also is the hub of the household entertainment system. With the click of a mouse, the Rolling Stones play as the stay-at-home mom prepares dinner. With another click, Dora the Explorer plays for her 2-year-old daughter, Tatum. The computer connects with the plasma TV and plays the family's vacation pictures for the grandparents.

"We use our computer for everything," Ralph said.

The Ralph family is one of a growing number of households that are integrating technology into their homes. Computers are being plastered into bedroom walls, iPods are being planted in kitchens and razor-thin plasma screens hang like portraits. Touch screens control lighting and temperature. A remote control can be used to play DVDs and CDs in every room.

Companies that help digitize homes are seeing more customers. Industry experts call a lot of the current technology "bells and whistles" but say that adding technology also helps save time and eliminates clutter.

"We mostly help families catch up to speed with what's happening in lifestyle technologies and consumer electronics," said Adam Goldfeder, the CEO of HouseDigital (www.myhousedigital.com), a Rochester company that integrates high-tech systems into homes.

One of HouseDigital's popular products is the Sonos Controller, which allows people to access their music collection anywhere in their house.

The high-tech house is catching on so steadily that Homearama will showcase the first digital house when the show launches June 3 in the Lakewood Meadows subdivision in Canandaigua.

The home features a "swing room," a central space where computers and other technologies are centralized. "The key here is the way it is monitored by the household," John Colaruotolo, president of Anco Builders Inc.

Another feature is cameras installed in various rooms to help parents keep tabs on their children.

"They (children) come in from the garage or the front door, and the camera will snap. It says, 'Hi, Johnny,' snaps the picture and e-mails the pictures to the parents," he said.

For the Ralphs, centralizing the home entertainment system helped clear clutter and eliminate the racks of CDs and paper, Ralph said.

"Everything that has been done for us has worked and it was easy to use," she said.

But for many, the technology is just cool.

"There's definitely some whiz-bang to the gadgets," said Jeff Kellmanson of Pittsford, who had the Sonos system installed by HouseDigital.

Other popular electronics include home automation systems that can help save energy costs. VideoCraft Inc. (www.videocraftinc.com), a Pittsford company, is seeing a growing number of customers installing home automation control systems that keep tabs on everything from lighting to temperatures with a key pad or touch screen.

"I think it's for control. When you link everything together, all these things become a control thing," said Jim Jewett, VideoCraft's president.

Making a house high-tech doesn't have to be expensive. The costs can range from about $1,000 to $200,000 and up, the companies interviewed said.

When the technology was on the cutting edge, people with higher incomes were the ones taking advantage of it, Jewett said.

"As we go ahead, and now with high energy costs, all these things will become more of a factor."

The "house of the future" is limited only by imagination, experts say. Over the next 10 to 20 years, some products might let people use backyard materials to create gas, or some homes might be built of materials that can be easily transformed. The technology to do such things already exists, said Sesh Velamoor, deputy director of programming at Foundation of the Future, based in Bellevue, Wash.

"It's nothing new and radical. Ultimately a home has to be a home," Velamoor said.

However, Heather Ralph said that she would try new kinds of technologies if it saves her time and is easy to use.

"I'd love a vacuum that could run around my house and vacuum, so I have more time to play with my daughter," she said.

View the article online