KEEP THE HOME WIRES BURNING

Our parents may have walked 10 miles uphill in the snow to school, but except for a few contemporary anomalies, people today are all basically lazy. We love the automatic coffee maker that brews a pot of java while we're still tucked in bed. A dishwasher and microwave to help out in the kitchen surely don't hurt, either. So why not take things a step further and give our homes a brain?

That's the idea behind home fix-it guru Bob Vila's “Connected Home” project. For the twelfth season of Vila's television series “Home Again,” the crew took on two different homes: one a 100-year-old farmhouse in Medford, Mass.; the other a new vacation home going up in Quechee, Vt. The idea was to equip the homes with everything from state-of-the-art security systems to sound systems to high-speed broadband access, all working in unison.

With the Connected Home, homeowners can simply crank up the heat via their telephones or the Internet. They can also instruct the doors to unlock remotely. The Quechee home had the advantage of easy wiring and equipment installation because the technologies were put in during construction. But it didn't have the option of cable or DSL like the house in Medford did, so a two-way DirecWay satellite was used instead. “With that as a pipe, we added the standard functionality of mounted cameras that would enable the owners to remotely view rooms,” said Dan Newberry, executive producer of BobVila.com.

Newberry said it was the actual integration of the technologies that made the task so daunting, so the Vila team relied on the help of others such as the nonprofit Internet Home Alliance and a home integration company called Home Director. “Projects like these allow companies to work together without committing to the bottom line,” said Tim Woods, president of Cookson Consulting, which works with the Internet Home Alliance.

It will likely take around 24 to 36 months to see integrated systems such as the ones in the Connected Home project to reach the masses. But just as we need plumbers and electricians, a connected home will likely remain a job that requires hired expertise.

“It's better if you don't reinvent the world,” Woods said. “People want you to take away complexity from their lives, not add to it.”