From the outside, the Columbus, Ohio, home known as Woodland Hall looks like any other executive mansion, complete with extensive landscaping and a broad red-brick driveway that leads to the front door. Inside the 12,000-square-foot house are the types of amenities associated with homes in this category: a full theater, a wine cellar and a gymnasium complete with a spa, just to name a few.

But Woodland Hall has something else that its neighbors can't claim - a software-based home control system called Lifeware, which makes operating a house this size as easy as changing a channel on the TV with a remote.

While the nuts and bolts (or in this case, volts) of the system, with its miles of wiring, extensive equipment list and two dedicated rooms (one for a control command center and the other for multiple racks of equipment) can seem overwhelmingly complex, its operation is both easy and intuitive, even in a home this size.

Two ubiquitous items - the television set and a PC with Windows Media Center - serve as the cornerstone of the Lifeware system, trading on the homeowner's familiarity with existing technology to reduce the learning curve to an almost flat line. The open, standards-based Lifeware software, developed by the Columbus-based firm Exceptional Innovation (EI), is designed to be compatible with different types of equipment and home systems. This means homeowners can pick and choose hardware from among the product lines that have been designated as Lifeware-compatible, giving them greater flexibility and scalability in everything from lighting and security to distributed audio and appliances.

A Day in the Life

In Ray Bradbury's short story "There Will Come Soft Rains€

(1950), a fully automated home continues to work even when its owners are no longer around to direct its operation. In a case of life imitating art, today's home control systems have managed to achieve a level of performance that is getting closer to Bradbury's conception, with various components - lights, HVAC, entertainment and security - turning on and off according to pre-defined settings.

The Woodland Hall home not only follows suit, but takes the owner/home network relationship to a new level, making it less about the homeowner telling the subsystems what to do and when to do it, and more about interacting with the components themselves. It's like having a computerized household staff at your beck and call - only in this case, the "staff€

in question is known collectively as Lifescenes, and involves user-defined settings that control lighting, audio, security and so on.

The Lifescenes can be triggered by any event, from a specific time of day to an action on the part of the homeowner. Once an installer or technician sets up a Lifescene, the homeowner can refine it to suit specific preferences.

A day in a Lifeware house like Woodland Hall might begin with choosing a Lifescene called "Good Morning.€

Without further effort on your part, lights come on, draperies and shades open, and your choice of entertainment (the morning news on the radio or an early morning talk show on TV) clicks on.

Kids in the house? You can program a variety of activities to take place in their rooms to get them up and about, with a minimum amount of the often frustrating cajoling ("It's time to get up.€

"You need to get up now.€

"I'm not calling you again!€

) that can be part of the morning routine.

During the day, preset Lifescenes can adjust the home's climate, lighting and security for unoccupied status. When family members arrive home at day's end, another Lifescene (perhaps called "Welcome Home€

) can be set to adjust the interior climate while the "smart€

oven preheats for dinner preparation.

The system can literally control everything but the kitchen sink, although as the range of "smart€

appliances continues to expand, homeowners will be able to integrate even more items into the set-up. Communication becomes interactive: for example, the oven tells you that dinner is done and you can either sit down to eat or tell it to keep the food warm until everyone is at the table.

It's all about having multiple controllable aspects of your home all interacting and happening at the same time - when and how you want them to - instead of having to set each device individually.

And given the focus on energy efficiency, any home (especially one the size of Woodland Hall) can realize a more efficient use of lighting and HVAC systems, since they operate at the settings you need them to only when you need them, instead of all the time.

That's Entertainment

The biggest draw for homeowners, however, is probably the interactive entertainment aspect of Lifeware. Numbers provided by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) show that 58 percent of new homes built in 2005 had a home theater upgrade, while 65 percent had distributed audio as a standard or optional feature. And Parks Associates, a market research and consulting firm, estimates that by the year 2010, 30 million households will have a connected entertainment network, consisting of a PC, media server and DVR, or similar configuration.

With Lifeware, homeowners have an easy and efficient way to navigate through all their digital media (music, movies and pictures) from any controller-equipped room in the house, as well as distribute media to any or all zones in the home at the touch of a button.

For instance, pop the card from your digital camera into the appropriate slot on a computer and you can send photos to a TV in any room, or upload the photos to the system for later access. Send music into any room (where occupants can adjust the volume or reject it entirely) or watch a movie or pre-recorded show on any TV set in the home.

There are some who are concerned that home control systems such as Lifeware are just another step on the slippery slope that will turn us into a nation of computer-connected couch potatoes. But Mike Seamons, EI's vice president of marketing, points out that a Lifeware house actually gives you more time for what really matters, instead of spending precious minutes adjusting all the systems in the house.

"Electronics and appliances are being designed to be more intelligent, but what's been missing is a way to connect them all together effectively in a single network,€

he says, adding that Lifeware can seamlessly tie together all of a family's digital entertainment and home control systems, making it easier for family members to access, manage and share music, photos, videos and information.

The components that keep Woodland Hall humming along can be loosely divided into two main categories: the appliances and accessories found in any house (but equipped with a "smart€

element) and the communication devices that enable you to "talk€

through Lifeware to these devices.

In Woodland Hall, the equipment list, while comprehensive, is all managed through the Lifeware network. Three Hewlett Packard computers and a tablet-like Samsung Ultra Mobile PC, all with Windows Media Center, provide points of contact to interact with the system.

Additional communication portals include televisions and a Lifepoint wall-mounted widescreen touch panel, all of which provide easy access to the wide assortment of components throughout the house. Those components include Insteon, Vantage, Lutron, Leviton, CentraLite, Intermatic and HomePro lighting systems and controls; Aprilaire and Honeywell HVAC controls and thermostats; Russound, NuVo, Denon and Marantz speakers and audio/video equipment; GE and Honeywell security components; Panasonic and Axis security cameras; Lutron and MechoShade shading systems; and a TMIO intelligent oven.

In all, Woodland Hall has 15 televisions, 19 HVAC zones, 22 cameras, 36 audio zones, 120 security zones and hundreds of lighting zones, as well as three Xbox systems, motion-controlled lighting in the closets and 10 hours of battery power backup.

While the Lifeware system requires at least one Windows Media Center-equipped device to function, homeowners can choose which devices to use throughout the home to extend communication to specific rooms. For example, the office might have a dedicated PC, while a television with an Xbox would provide access in a bedroom, and unobtrusive touch panels would be located in the foyer or hallways. And for those who like to "walk and talk,€

the Ultra Mobile PCs provide on-the-go communication as you travel from room to room.

Retrofitting a System

While the Woodland Hall house was equipped with the Lifeware system during the construction process, Lifeware-compatible wireless products make it relatively simple to install a home control system in existing homes. Even easier, homeowners can opt to build their home networks in stages, either as specific zones or by installing individual systems (such as security, audio or lighting) one at a time, then adding on other systems at a later date.

Installing a home control system is more than just a new way to play the age-old game of "keeping up with the Joneses.€

As Woodland Hall demonstrates, a well-integrated home control system can increase energy efficiency, provide security, offer a full range of entertainment options and, in general, make the home a more comfortable and enjoyable place to live.