Insteon

What if your exhaust fan was smart enough to know that the fire alarm had been triggered and could blow the smoke out of the house during a fire? What if you wanted your blinds to lower, your lights to dim, and your home alarm system to engage at 10:30 p.m. on weeknights and at midnight on weekends? What if your home was smart enough to do all these things with the touch of a button?

Insteon is the powerful home-control networking technology that provides homeowners with the potential to command their homes. Insteon creates a network that lets devices in the home talk to each other over radio frequency and existing wiring. A mind-boggling 16 million devices can be controlled on a single network, and includes anything powered by wire or battery. With minimal energy consumption, the network also offers over 65,000 possible commands including on, off, dim, lock, and open.

"It's very, very, very easy," says Ricki Darbee, senior marketing manager of SmartLabs Inc., the company that pioneered the platform. "We designed it that way on purpose to be able to bring the idea of home networking and home control and electronic home improvement to people who are not already using it."

The main difference between Insteon and other home automation systems is that Insteon does not have a central point of control. All of the devices are equal on the network and every new device added to it joins and repeats an existing command sequence. In this way, the masterand- slave relationship is eliminated. Although SmartLabs is encouraging hardware and software developers to use their platform in a range of new products, it's in lighting systems where Insteon is really breaking ground.

Newlywed Shawn Tyler created a home lighting network for his 2,500-square-foot courtyard-style home by upgrading all of the light switches on his main floor to Insteon. "My wife is notorious for leaving lights on and the house is a giant U shape. With all the architectural lighting there were 10 switches, so you had to run around the house turning each one off. I was able to put in a couple of keypads and now I can turn on every single light in the house with one button if I want to."

Once the switches were installed, Tyler programmed a lighting sequence in about an hour. Next he was able to replace his home's seven timers by establishing a lighting sequence for his virtual switches through the home computer. Says Tyler, "it knocked a good $80 a month off my electric bill."

Insteon switches can be installed room by room for about $25 per switch. Starter kits, which may include plug-ins or wire-ins, are over $100, but if you want your entire house wired every switch requires an Insteon device. Visit