One button from his bedside shuts off lights across the entire house, while turning on nightlights in the bathrooms. The system keeps a two-week record of the family’s light use and replays that when they go on vacation, to maintain a lived-in look.

Another button lights the way from the garage to the kitchen for stumble-free unloading of kids, briefcases and groceries.

The light and sound networks aren’t as complicated to use as the Palays first feared. In fact, David Palay says, he’s thinking of adding another layer of controls to tie together music, video and lights to make it even simpler.

In the past two years, whole home networking has moved from the nerds to the herds.

Until recently, distributors say, there was only one option for integrating security, lighting, music and video systems throughout the house: the two high-end equipment suppliers - Crestron and AMX - that have dominated the category since its inception.

That changed with the arrival of Control4, a preprogrammed system geared for the masses. The simplified, modular system has made home networking a possibility for those who want to start at about $1,200 for one room, or up to $10,000 for the whole house. High-end setups, like Crestron and AMX, typically start at around $5,000 for a home theater and can rise to six figures for a fully automated, custom home-control system.

It has been dawning on middle-class folks who were connecting their multiple home computers that they ought to be able to hook in music from CDs and iPods, says Sandy Teger, co-founder of Broadband Home Central, a home networking Web site and consultancy in Morris Plains, N.J.

Once a homeowner makes the leap from connecting computers to connecting music, the notion to hook in lighting, security systems and video becomes a natural, and the Control4 mix-and-match concept fits neatly into consumers’ expectations, she says.

Wireless connections can handle data and music transmissions but don’t have the capacity for high-definition television, say Teger and some Milwaukee-area installers of home networking systems. Networking systems that run on wiring built into the walls integrate control of everything that can be controlled, from temperature to which music track plays in which room to the position of automated blinds at different points in the day. Video transmits smoothly through internal wiring, which makes a broadband Internet connection and cable or satellite video access available to all televisions and computers in the house.

Two years ago, it cost about $450 to outfit each room’s light and temperature switches with a row of programmed buttons or a touch-screen control panel from AMX or Crestron, says Mike Phillips, a principal with Techteriors, a Mequon installer of home networking gear. With Control4, the cost is $120 per switch, installed.

“It replaces the light switches, the thermostat, and so on,” says Will West, chief executive officer of the Salt Lake City-based company. “The box is the brains for the house.”

The entry-level cost for a Control4 system is about $595 for a home theater controller, with add-ons for time, temperature, lighting and so on in $100 to $200 increments, West says. A 2,500-square-foot house can be built or retrofitted with a system with 30 light switches, plus controls for temperature and the security component, for about $10,000, he says. For an additional $4,000, you can add controls for lights, whole-house audio and a home theater system.

What AMX and Crestron offer that Control4 doesn’t is from-scratch customization that mirrors the habits of each customer family, and amenities such as interactive floor-plan graphics.

In most markets, the two high-end systems are built into new houses worth at least $500,000. Those houses are so big, and there is so much to monitor, that it’s almost a necessity to have a system that coordinates and tracks what’s on where, manufacturers say.

“It gets them when they walk into their great room or home theater and there are five remotes on the table . . . the TV, the DVD, the TiVo. But with a control system, you hit one button - ‘watch movie’ - and the lights go down, the screen comes down and the DVD pops out. You put it in, you watch the movie,” says Arnold Noble, vice president of product management for AMX, based in Richardson, Texas.

He predicts that the premium-priced systems will soon introduce more moderately priced options, partly because manufacturers are now working directly with builders, and partly because all the systems are becoming so simple to use that few consumers are intimidated by them anymore.

West says that even he has been surprised at the ways he uses the Control4 program installed in his own house.

He has programmed the bedrooms for each of his six children, ages 1 to 18, to reflect their good-night rituals. Light in the 1-year-old’s room fades for 10 minutes. When the 18-year-old switches on the light in her room at night, the system makes a note.

And if he wants to be sure she’s there, West says, “I can use the motion sensor in her room.”

Who’s wired at home
Percentage of American households with:

Internet access 64%
Broadband Internet 41%
Home theater 42%
Wired security system 27%
Home network 22%
MP3 player 19%
DVR 18%

Households that have a high-definition television:
38% of households with annual incomes of $100,000 or more
25% of households with annual income of $75,000 to $100,000