'Smart' homes for the do-it-yourselfer

Every so often, Michael Brennan will get an e-mail while he's at work, letting him know that something's going on at his front door, 30 miles away. Usually, it's a deliveryman leaving a package. Occasionally, it's a neighborhood kid using Brennan's driveway as a bike ramp.

But more often than not, it's a bird. Brennan knows this because he simply dials up a website that's connected to his house to see a snapshot of his door taken by a security camera. "I've got a lot of good bird pictures," said the 34-year-old software engineer. "They'll fly right up to the camera and look at it."

No problem, though, he said. He's happy to catalog the many bird species that live in Greater Worcester, as long as the disruption isn't due to a burglar.

Brennan has an automated home -- a "smart" home -- meaning he can adjust and monitor security cameras, lights, temperature, even his stereo from afar with his computer or cellphone. The first smart homes were wired in the 1980s. But as recently as five years ago, the systems were still costly, usually at least $10,000, keeping them out of reach for most people.

Though it's still easy to spend that kind of money, the difference now is that homeowners have an option of spending far less -- with off-the-shelf, do-it-yourself kits available starting in the low hundreds. It's a shift that some in the industry think will finally push the home-automation market out of gearhead catalogs and into the mainstream.

"Before, the folks who did this only cared about the $100,000 spender," said Joseph Lautner, a vice president at Marblehead-based HomeLogic, which develops customized home-automation technology solutions. Now, the bill from a company like his can be as little as $1,000, he said. The primary difference is that the technology used to be proprietary to particular companies, so "it was a very custom job." Now, most systems can accommodate cameras and sensors from almost any manufacturer, so consumers can bargain shop, he said.

Some of the more affordable products on the market are manufactured by companies including Bedford, N.H.-based HomeSeer, Irvine, Calif.-based Smarthome, and HomeGenie, built by Texas energy giant Shell. Most of the systems, so far, are available for purchase only through the Internet.

Each system operates a little differently. Shell's HomeGenie, for example, requires a consumer to pay $599 for a kit that includes several items: a "gateway," which is an always-on device that connects to a computer cable or DSL modem; a soda-can-sized wireless camera that transmits to the gateway, which in turn transmits to a secure, customized website run by Shell; a power switch that plugs into an electrical socket, and into which a homeowner would plug a lamp or appliance he wants to control; and a contact sensor, which could be attached to a door, a window, a cabinet, or even a drawer. The rectangular device, applied with double-stick tape, can monitor (and record) when that door is opened and closed.

All of the Shell devices talk to the gateway via radio frequency, so the system doesn't require expensive wiring or retrofitting. The homeowner simply logs into his HomeGenie website, which costs $25 a month, and monitors these or any of the other 254 add-ons -- such as moisture and temperature sensors, motion detectors, and home entertainment controls -- that the system can support. The website, for example, saves snapshots from any of the motion-tripped security cameras in or around the house, as well as any red flags -- low temperatures in the basement, for example, where the pipes are.

"We've identified some specific users and some specific groups that could benefit from HomeGenie" said Robin Gaeta, general manager of Shell's home automation division. "One is those people who would like to monitor their homes because they have concern about everything being OK. The other one is caregivers, those who are monitoring another individual," -- an elder parent, perhaps.

Without exception, the manufacturers of these systems say that anyone can install them. But some experts are still skeptical.

"It still takes a lot of know-how," said Sean Wargo, director of industry analysis for Washington D.C.-based Consumer Electronics Association. "I've installed an X10 unit here at work, and you really should be an electrician, because there are wiring implications." X10 -- the company's name as well as the set of protocols designed by that company -- is one of the oldest home-automation systems on the market. It operates over a home's powerline, rather than through radio frequency signals, so there's some simple rewiring required.

Wargo figures that years from now, home-automation and security systems will be standard components of new home construction, but until then it will remain an early-adopter phenomenon. "We're still in the phase of showing how great these things are, how much they cost, and how you would install them. You have to reach a point where it's common knowledge that something like this exists, and how you do it. Everyone knows toilets exist, and it's a fairly straightforward thing to replace a valve. But does everyone do it? No, because there is that learning curve, that fear," he said.

Michael Sommer, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based specialist on consumer electronics and host of a gadgets show for NBC, has a similar reaction: "These are still sophisticated systems. This is for the person who doesn't want to spend thousands of dollars to have a professional come in, but they want to tinker with it themselves -- your do-it-yourselfer, the person who is computer-literate, the person who is handy, can do it," he said. "Your grandmother is not going to do any of it."

For what it's worth, Brennan -- who started out last year with a HomeSeer product for a couple of hundred dollars, and by now has invested a couple of thousand -- says he's completely comfortable. He's programmed it to know when he leaves and comes home from work, so the lights turn off and on automatically, and he never comes home to a cold house in the winter. He has a computer in his basement, dedicated to running the system, and checks in just about every day from his office computer to see what's up at his townhouse.

One of his newest add-ons is a little sensor that lies on the floor next to his water heater. If the heater ever leaks, the sensor will trigger an alarm that immediately sends a text message to his cellphone, telling him there's trouble. For someone who travels, the peace of mind associated with that is priceless, he said. And, frankly, he added, when he's away, "it's just nice not to have someone look in on the house."