Control (and Monitor) Your Home via Your Cellphone

Home control—devices that can monitor your home for security, energy efficiency, and more—has been around forever, but you either had to be one of those really DIY-types or pay a lot of money for professional installation.

A few days ago, Dory Devlin wrote about Easton Electrical's Home Heartbeat, a company making great strides in prepackaged home security. But Dory, I'm about to raise the bar.

A company called Xanboo creates a home monitoring system, simple enough to install yourself, which will let you control and monitor your home right from your cellphone. You can control a remote video camera and watch your home as streaming video on your phone, in real time. You can add a motion control sensor to monitor your home for security, add a water sensor to monitor for flooding or breakage, even monitor the baby's room, or an aging relative. While you can use your computer to monitor these devices, Xanboo is betting you'll be working from your phone, checking up on the house from various distant locales.

The product, homesight, can be bought piece by piece to suit your needs. A basic starter kit comes with a gateway box and a video camera. The gateway plugs into any broadband router and costs about $200.

Once the gateway is plugged in, you place the various sensors and cameras where you want them and press a single button on the units which allows them to "discover" each other. On your cellphone, you download a small Java app that lets you control the devices. Verizon, Cingular, Sprint, and Nextel all support Xanboo, but you'll need an Internet-capable cellphone. In a partnership with Motorola, Xanboo offers about 20 different devices.

Look for homesight at RadioShack, some Best Buy stores, and on the company website.