Intelligent Home

["Shiv Kumar" <shivkumar@satyam.net.in>]

Now, a home with a view on the Net?
Hi-tech cyber product launched to give remote access to your house?
express news service?

 You are on a vacation in Goa, but are suddenly gripped by a holidayer's
 greatest nightmare: ?iIs the bedroom light still on at my Borivli flat? Did
 I forget to switch off the gas??r Or worse still, ?iIs my house safe from
 thieves??r. There's no need to take the first flight back to Mumbai, just
go
 to the nearest cyber cafe, log on to a personal website and switch off the
 gas, light, fan, TV or even the geyser via Internet. What's more, you can
 also closely watch `live' every corner of your home with the help of this
 remote access technology.?

With Mumbai now well connected with broadband Internet cabling, the above
 scenario is no longer a cyber fantasy that only concerns the rich and the
 famous. A new infotech product called `SmartHome' has just been launched by
 Zeos Infotech Pvt Ltd, a city based IT company, in order to integrate
 hi-tech for a better lifestyle and security.?

SmartHome is a unique wireless networking of one's house so that most of
 the electronic gadgets can be easily remote-controlled by a mobile phone,
 palmtop or even a web-linked PC.?
``Apart from e-security surveillance of your house, another interesting
 feature of SmartHome is the use of fingerprint technology to not only
 identify and record the number of visitors that knock on your door, but to
also leave individual voice messages for them in case you are not around,''
informed the MD of Zeos Infotech, Veetrag Bafna.?

For example, if you want to tell the milkman not to deliver milk on a
particular day, a recorded message can be left for him, which will be
 automatically played when the milkman touches your `special' doorbell.?

But of course, like all good things SmartHome also comes at a premium
price: Rs 2,50,000 for installing all the features of home automation
system. ``This price can be reduced if one only wants some of the features
such as remote online view of the house, or hi-tech burglar alarm that
automatically calls your mobile phone in case there is an intruder in the
house,'' said Bafna, and further reasoned: ``In the US such a product will
cost as high as Rs 15 lakh. In fact Microsoft chief, Bill Gates, also has an
`intelligent home' that has cost him nearly 20 million US dollars for its
installation. So our wireless technology product is dirt cheap in India.''?

Famous architect, Hafeez Contractor, is quite excited to hear about such a
thing. ``I would love to use such technology at my own home too as this is
good progress to make life easier. Though it is priced at Rs 2.50 lakh, in
another six months the cost can come down to Rs 50,000 that the price is no
big deal, when compared to what it offers,'' says Contractor.?

The Managing Director of Onward Novell, Harish Mehta, is also keenly
interested in such technology, as "he himself runs a big IT firm".?
Though at the moment they haven't got any Indian clients for the product,
there is already a steady demand from Hong Kong and Singapore.?
``I had started working on this two years back after visiting an IT
exhibition in Singapore, where a similar product was priced at Rs 15 lakh.
 What makes our product cheaper and even better is that one does not have to
 rip apart the house walls to install the wiring, as SmartHome works on
 wireless technology,'' says Bafna.?

Even the minutest of local problems, such as mosquito menace, has been
 taken care of by this cyber innovation. ``While you are at work or just
 about to leave for home, you can easily switch on the anti-mosquito
 repellant by either using your mobile phone or the personal website; so by
 the time you actually reach home, there will be no mosquitoes around!'' he
 explains.?

Just one hazard of such a hi-tech lifestyle: In case some one else's comes
to know the password of the website you log on to in order to remote-access
 the house, your place can easily become the `glass house' of the entire web
 community!?