Home Automation

You can now control your lights or appliances, entertainment system, heating and air conditioning and more, automatically or manually, from anywhere in your home or via the Internet from anywhere in the world. And you don’t have to do it all at once--you can start with a light or two and add capabilities as you want or need them.

Home Settings system by Intermatic (www.homesettings.com) can start you off with some of these capabilities and uses Z-Wave technology to perform its magic (more about that later). In its simplest form, the system consists of a master remote control and one or two individual control modules. You’ll need a separate module for each light or connected series of lights or each appliance you want to control. Intermatic offers a basic lighting control starter kit for $129.99. The kit contains a master remote control and two lamp modules; the lamp modules plug into a wall socket, and the lamp plugs into the module. These modules will turn the connected lamp on or off or dim it to the desired brightness. The lamp modules cannot be used with florescent lights, motor loads or magnetic or electronic transformers. For control of these devices you’ll need an optional appliance module. Unfortunately, appliance modules can be used to control on or off but not dimming.

Other optional control modules include an outdoor appliance module for landscape or holiday lights, a screw-in lamp module for post lights, and in-wall switches and receptacles. Compatible Z-Wave technology control modules are also available from other manufacturers (www.z-wave.com). These modules can control your garage doors, add dimming capability to florescent lights, control your entertainment system, security system (including cameras) and more.

Control of the modules is done via the master remote control, from which you can remotely turn your lamps on or off or program the lamps to turn on or off automatically at specific times or randomized times. Programming allows you to set on/off times to occur daily, weekdays only, weekends only or on a per-day basis. From the master remote control you’ll be able to change the brightness level manually or program a brightness level if the light is set to come on automatically.

The Intermatic system allows you to create "scenes," or pre-programmed sets of events. For example, Scene One might open your garage doors, turn on outdoor house lights and hallway lights and disable your security system. Scene Two might consist of dimming the lights in your media room to a preset level, closing your motorized curtains and turning on your TV; Scene Three could be a night-time event that turns off all the controlled house lights except for a hall night light and an outdoor post light. Each of these scenes are activated by a single button on the remote control.

Additional capabilities are provided by setting up your personal computer as a master control. Intermatic HomeSettings has available a starter kit ($179.99) to do just this. It consists of HomeSettings ThinkEssentials home control software (PC only), Z-Wave PC USB adapter, lamp control module, appliance control module and a handy mini-remote controller. Using the PC software, you draw an outline of your home and environs on screen and place the location of each control module. A visual representation shows the status of each module, including off, on and/or brightness setting. Programming can be done by clicking on a module in the diagram and setting up on/off times, brightness levels and what day(s) the action takes place.

(Z-Wave 101): Z-Wave is a two-way wireless communication protocol developed by a Danish company, Zensys, and the Z-Wave Alliance. Z-Wave is specifically designed for short range home automation and sensor networks. The system works by creating a network consisting of the master remote controller and any modules added to the network. Adding modules to the network is a bit tedious but only needs be done once. After associating a channel with a module or modules,(another tedious process) the master controller can then send commands to one or more of the modules at your command or by executing programed events. The module then responds by performing the action requested and sending a signal to the master controller that the action was successfully executed. The range between the master controller and a module depends on the specific locations of the units and is stated to be in the 50-200 foot range. Since each module can act as a repeater, the effective range can be more.

Unfortunately, directions for set-up of HomeSettings tend to be confusing or incomplete. There are no out-of-the-box directions to tell you how to proceed from scratch, and there are no simplified diagrams illustrating sample set-ups. The arrangement may work for the tech-savvy consumer, but we’d advise the tech-challenged to have the system installed by a professional. Our experience using both the hand-held master controller and the PC version of the master controller and light and appliance modules showed us that once the system was set up, it works as above. In terms of convenience, safety and the cool factor, HomeSettings can be a useful start to home automation.

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