Seattle Area Gets Hip

The debate over whether wireless will one day eliminate the need for structured wiring has for years ended with some major sticking points—first and foremost that there are no wireless systems that can reliably run high-definition (HD) video. Plus, wired connections still offer the most secure and reliable voice and data communications.

Although wireless has made steady gains in the voice and data worlds, running HD signals over wireless is far from ready for production home building. And there's every indication that the next generation of Wi-Fi—802.11n—won't support HD either.

Still, some Seattle-area home builders are working with Seattle home automation software company Lagotek Corp. to roll out a wireless home-technology infrastructure system.

Ron Risdon, president of Lagotek, says the company's four founders have previous management-level experience at Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp., and Parametric Technology Corp.—and have about $2 million from local Seattle investors to help launch the company. Risdon says the first generation of the company's Home Intelligence Platform 100 (HIP) controllers support four applications: HVAC, surveillance cameras, lighting, and audio.

At press time, discussions to support alarm.com's security system and Vonage's voice over Internet protocol service were in the works. Later this year, Lagotek plans to roll out a second generation version with a controller that supports Microsoft's Windows Media Center, Microsoft's platform for home entertainment and automation.

“As we replace the elements of structured wiring, we need to have the application be equal to or better than the wired solution,” Risdon says. “Now we can do most applications up to HD video,” he says, adding that for the initial rollout, the builders deploying the HIP controllers will use coaxial cable for video.

The first builders to install the HIP controllers in a new home are the Construction Resource Group (CRG) of Redmond, Wash., and Redmond-based Tenhulzen Remodeling. CRG, a modular builder that builds roughly 45 homes a year, is the primary builder and designer, and Tenhulzen Remodeling was contracted to build the foundations and do the landscaping and trim work. The home is a 7,000-square-foot custom home for a Seattle businessman [who lives] in Kirkland, Wash.

“This gives us a cutting-edge kind of verve,” says Roger Stark-weather, CRG's vice president. “If all goes well, we could see Lagotek being a standard specification in all the homes we build.”

Jack Tenhulzen, president of the remodeling company, says people remember what a failure the building industry's “smart home” concept was several years ago, so the goal is to try to build up consumer demand slowly.

“The smart home never did gain traction,” says Tenhulzen. “But our office is one mile from Microsoft's main campus,” he notes, adding that “these people live and breathe computers, they are flooded with technology at their offices and places of work, and they want that same level in the home.”

According to Risdon, what's really unique about Lagotek's approach is that installing roughly four HIP controllers in a home forms a mesh network that creates a platform for running home applications. Much like the Internet, a mesh network is a series of networked devices that keep the network up and running so long as one of the devices is functioning. Up to now, products like Smarthome's Insteon lighting switches or Z-Wave receptacles and dimmers were touted as mesh networks, but, in reality, they were single applications that used a mesh network as a transport.

“Applications like Insteon and Z-Wave are using a mesh network as the fastest way to route a command to any given location,” says Risdon. “We're building a mesh network to create an integrated operating platform,” he explains.

Here's an inside look at Lagotek's mesh network: Each HIP 100 controller has a touchscreen, temperature sensors, a microphone, a speaker, and an infrared wireless control. It also has a proximity sensor that switches to “ready” when a person walks into the house, a feature that helps homeowners control energy costs.

In a standard home you might have two controllers downstairs and two upstairs, typically situated in rooms where people spend most of their time. Downstairs, they're likely to be near the family room and the kitchen; upstairs, they may be in the master bedroom and the home office. There's also an HIP 200 wireless interface hub attached to the HVAC system. The HIP 200 wirelessly receives any changes in temperature the homeowner keys in on the HIP 100. The installers are also running 24-volt, low-voltage wires to the dampers that control the air flow in the heating and cooling system. One note: Homeowners can control the network via the touchscreen, a remote control device, or a PDA. Lagotek will support cell phones later this year in its second release.

For lighting, all standard lighting switches are replaced with Z-Wave dimmers and receptacles. The basic idea is that whenever homeowners want to control one or more lights, they would attach a Z-Wave receptacle or dimmer.

The surveillance cameras installed are all Wi-Fi models that the controllers recognize as soon as they are installed. Both the cameras and the controllers work similar to the way a laptop with a built-in wireless card would recognize a Linksys or Netgear router when a user logs on.

Lagotek plans to market to home builders and support CEDIAinstallers for installation and product support. Risdon says the system costs roughly 2 percent of the value of the home. So on a $400,000 home, Lagotek's wireless mesh network would cost about $8,000.

At that price, Lagotek's system won't be the first choice of production builders, but Risdon hopes that by slowly building up a following with custom builders, homeowners will start to see the value.