Shola's Home Gadgets

In my first post about home automation, I started sharing my thoughts about what images the word automating a house conjured in my mind.

In this post, I will conclude sharing those thoughts, and look at home automation in my home.

It is 12:00 noon at home, my wife who works from home is busy in the house somewhere, a voice is heard in the study and the hallway 'Grace you have 3 new email messages', the voice then goes on to read the addresses that have sent the email messages. My wife can use the information to decide if there are any urgent emails she needs to check even if she is not on the computer.

A few hours have passed, that voice again 'Grace you have 15 minutes to pick up Tina from school'.

Its 6:00pm, I'm just leaving work, back at home, that voice announces to my wife the latest emails she has in her in box.

At 7:00pm, I open the front door, as it is winter, it is already dark, I enter the hallway, the hallway light automatically comes on, with the light on the landing at the top of the stairs also coming on. I put down my briefcase, take off my shoes and crash on the couch in the leaving room.

2 minutes after I had opened the door, the lights on the landing automatically switch off, followed 3 minutes later by the hallway light.

At 8:00pm my older daughter gets a verbal reminder by that voice to have her bath before going to bed, while I ask my younger daughter to go put her pyjamas on and I take her to bed. By 9:00pm my wife and I have the house to ourselves.

At 10:40pm the voice announces 'Misterhouse is going to bed, goodnight', we decide we are having an early night too so walk up the flight of stairs but forget to switch off the study light. One hour 26 minutes after we went upstairs, a voice announces on the study PC 'all systems will go off in 4 minutes', 4 minutes later, all power is cut to the entertainment cabinet and the light we forgot to turn off goes of too.

This is home automation at its best with control by Misterhouse software.