Is this in Bill Gates’ House?

We all watched with great fascination the gadgets and gizmos that Microsoft Billionaire Bill Gates had built into his mega-million dollar home. Most of us secretly wished that we could do stuff like that to our homes as well, but since we’re not billionaires, then that prospect seemed… well, as Spock would put it… highly illogical. Not to mention improbable, or even impossible,

George Sintchak is a 20-year veteran of X10, and within those 20 years, he’s managed to create a house that you might say was very close to the house of the future. "I started with the simple 16 station controller and two lamp and one appliance module," George says. But since then, he’s turned his house into the house of the Star Trek Generation. He added ActiveHome to his system, and he’s been playing with the "talk-back" feature to initiate macros in ActiveHome. Just about everything in his house is automated, "except flushing the toilet," he says. But who knows, that could be coming soon.

The first thing he has set up is a motion sensor at the entry of his home so that the lights go on immediately when someone approaches. From there, he has his lights set on the remote control, which controls the lights in every room, including the bedrooms and attic. Appliance modules control the swimming pool pump, the coffee pot, the attic fan, and the house fans. Lamp modules control all inside and outside lights, including the floodlights.

For security, when nobody’s home, the computer turns on various house lights during the day and night, just to make the house seem lived in. "All the lights and the stereo are in a timed sequence" he says. "It mimics being in the downstairs areas till late evening, then starts turning on lights in the upstairs bedrooms while turning off lights in the downstairs areas. It follows a normal lived in appearance."

At George’s suggestion, a friend set up the telephone remote to turn on the heat and driveway lights in his winter cabin in Vermont. "When he is about an hour away, he dials up the house and turns everything on so when he arrives all is nice and warm."

And now George has the new Universal Remote to top the whole thing off. "I use it in my living room for the X10 controls, and with my TV and stereo system."

The whole house is its own entity thanks to ActiveHome. Which could be a little confusing to someone who’s never met a living, thinking house before. As George put it… "When friends visit, it takes them a while to get used to the lights and appliances going on and off by the computer or the remote controls. They are usually amazed and fascinated."

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