Netsurfing and Nightlights

September 18, 2001 - It was becoming an annoying question. "When are you going to put in a new light switch?" Greg Sohl's wife would shout as she came into the kitchen carrying a bag of groceries. It was a legitimate question, but she would ask that question every time she came into the kitchen from the garage. And this time Greg was tired of the question. Tired enough that he was going to do something about it. "She'd been bugging me for month to add a light switch in the kitchen that could be turned on when she came in from the garage," he said. So this time, in response to his wife's question, he replied form the basement where he likes to spend his time surfing the net, "Next week."

"It was either that, or continue to listen to the question," Greg said. It just so happened that day that Greg was surfing the web for 'another overpriced toy that he didn't need,' and as he hit one site he suddenly found himself staring at an ad from X10.com. "Now we'd had X10 devices installed for some time," Greg said, "and we've enjoyed the comfort of remote control lighting and a cool security system to boot."

With his wife's words freshly burning in his mind, he decided that he would see what X10 had to offer him as far as an answer to that question that he heard every grocery night. It was time for a solution. "I clicked on the X10 ad and wound up on the home page. I browsed around a while and then," that's right, "there it was." Greg had stumbled upon ActiveHome. "Suddenly a light went off over my head (pun intended)."

Greg placed his order, and in a few days he had everything he needed to take care of that little lighting problem. He hooked up a HawkEye motion sensor in the garage, where it would see his wife as soon as she pulled in. Then the HawkEye would turn on the light in the kitchen. And he had it done just the way he promised his wife... "Next week." It was perfect timing. "I installed the Hawkeye motion detector while my wife was making her weekly trip to the grocery store," he said. After that he went back to the basement and parked himself in front of the computer and waited.

Soon he heard the garage door open and his wife's car pulled in. The kitchen door opened with its usual jerk and creak and he heard his wife yell (still out of habit), "When are you going to..." She stopped. Then there was silence for several minutes. "I've been enjoying that silence for some time now," Greg says. "It's not easy to come by now." And what's most important to Greg? "No more interruptions to my surfing."

Thanks to the ActiveHome system, Greg was able to restore domestic tranquility, and still enjoy his web surfing. Now as for how much time he gets to spend on the web, that's between him and his wife.

Send comments or feedback on this article to xzone@x10.com