Why even consider a home control system? Consider this scenario: It's time for bed. You walk the entire house turning off lights, shutting blinds, setting the alarm, turning off the TV that your kids left on, and finally turning down the heat. With a home control system, when it's time for bed you press the "Bed Time" button on your touchscreen and the system does the walk around for you. The alarm is set, all lights are turned off (except the hall where the light is dimmed so grandma can find her way to the bathroom), blinds are lowered, the heat is turned down, and that TV two floors away is turned off. And when it's time to wake up the home control system can do it all in reverse, gently waking you up with music in your bedroom and then the kitchen, turning up the heat in the house, raising the blinds and whatever else you want to be part of your wake-up routine.

This is just one example of the comfort and convenience a home control system can offer. There are countless more, but you really have to think about your lifestyle and how a control system could make it more convenient, enjoyable, secure, and how it might also help you conserve energy.

Another benefit of a home control system is integration. Integrated systems complement each other. For example, if your alarm is triggered, the lights inside your home can turn on, and the outside lights can flash, alerting the police or neighbours of a problem. The security system or lighting system cannot do this on their own, but a control system that integrates these two systems can.

There are also aesthetic reasons to consider a control system. After all, a control system provides a single interface, such as a touchscreen, to control other systems within your home. How many times have you walked into a home to see a bank of 16 light switches, a security panel, a thermostat, and a distributed audio controller all jammed onto a wall, looking somewhat like the flight deck of the space shuttle (this condition is also known as ‘wall acne’, but is hard to fix with just a cream). In an automated home, all of these interfaces are replaced by a single interface: in some rooms where you want more feedback and a higher level of control, you may choose a touchscreen. In other rooms, sometimes a simple keypad will suffice.

A good custom home electronics dealer can help you decide what systems in your home you might like to integrate under a single home control system. Have a meeting and discuss a list of things in the home you would like to automate. Decide what level of control you want from different rooms in the house, and then ask about costs to install and program such a system. Some systems are very time consuming to program while other vendors have simplified the programming process to help dealers reduce the costs for these systems. Also find out if the programming can be changed remotely using an internet connection, an efficiency that will save the dealer time and will therefore save you time and money.

Phil Jones is President of Zoha Systems, Inc., a Coquitlam company that designs, sells, installs and services custom home electronics including home theatres. ©Copyright Zoha Systems, Inc