THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 19, 1996 TAG: 9608170137
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 09 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JUANITA RAISOR,staff writer
LENGTH: 43 lines
Ready for a smart home? One that operates at beck and call? One that will take you into the year 2000 and beyond?
Future Homes of Virginia Inc., a home automation design and integration company, in the Shield Office Building at 2240 West Great Neck Road in Virginia Beach, can help make your home serve you like a maid or butler.
The company, founded by Daniel F. O'Connell and William R. Shield, provides in-home automation systems in existing homes using its existing electrical wiring by replacing outlets and receptacles with special programmable ones. In a new home, the company installs an interactive network to direct the automation.
O'Connell, president, said the cabling gives the homeowner four ways to control the home - automatic scheduling, push-button control, remote control via telephone and voice activation.
O'Connell said a homeowner can program the coffee pot to start brewing by saying ``Good Morning,'' or call from the car phone to turn on the hot tub.
The scenarios can be programmed to perform several related functions to meet the customer's needs, and seem unlimited. ``You can turn the air conditioning on in your Nags Head home from here so it will be cool when you arrive,'' O'Connell said.
And it can be used to give those subtle hints for teen-agers. O'Connell said one customer had a switch installed in their third-floor bedroom to turn the lights off downstairs - a signal to friends its time to go home.
The wiring is a hybrid cable of fiber optic, twisted pair, and coaxial cable, running from a central control panel to the programmable wall receptacles throughout the house. And the special cable has an appropriate name - Futureproof.
The cost for a new home for installation of receptacles, the fiber optic cables and phone lines figured at 1 percent of the cost of the home. O'Connell said for an existing home, ``$3,000 would get you more than you ever wanted.''
In a networked home, the TV knows when the doorbell rings. A security camera flashes the visitor's picture on all of the TV's in the house, the phone turns into an intercom, the door is electronically opened, the identified visitor enters, the door shuts - and the home owner has not left his easy chair. by CNB