Visitors to the house, on the shores of Lake Washington, report that it features a super high-tech home automation system. Its occupants control nearly every aspect of their environment – including the digital picture frames – from portable touch pads.

Most homeowners can only dream of installing a home control system like the one in the Gates mansion. As Sam Lucero, a senior analyst with New York-based ABI Research, says: “For nearly 30 years, home automation technology has been available to consumers, but only as a niche market.

“At one end of the spectrum, technophile hobbyists have had access to simple, principally power-line-based technology from X10 [an industry standard for communication among devices within a home],” says Mr Lucero. “At the other end, homeowners building expensive custom homes have had access to boutique dealer-installers who design and install custom home automation systems costing $20,000-$100,000 [£10,700-£53,400] or more.” These are mostly based on complex “structured” wiring systems and expensive proprietary components.

As a result, home automation technology has largely been ignored by mainstream, middle-class consumers. But that could be changing. “A new class of technology vendors is focusing on the use of standard technologies, such as ZigBee and Z-Wave [two wireless networking systems], to create packaged solutions,” says Mr Lucero. The vendors include Salt Lake City-based Control4, Cortexa Technology of Austin, Texas, Exceptional Innovation and Nobu, among others. All are focusing on “whole-home” automation systems in the $2,000-$5,000 range.

Most of these systems enable users to control and manage household devices and services including security, heating and ventilation, lighting, and irrigation using sensors, wireless controllers and wall pads. The most advanced, such as Control4’s system, which uses standard Ethernet, Wi-Fi and ZigBee wireless networking technologies, also control and distribute digital media throughout a home, enable complex combinations of commands that may be activated by a single button and allow users to monitor, manage and activate household systems remotely over the web using a standard browser.

Some of these new systems were on display this week in Denver, Colorado at the Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association’s (Cedia) show which was expected to attract more than 600 exhibitors and about 30,000 attendees.

The size of the show attests to the rapid growth of the market for network-based home automation and control systems. Sales of home-system controllers in the US will grow from $2.5bn this year to $3.2bn in 2009, says George West, senior analyst at California-based West Technology Research Solutions. Jonathan Gaw, an analyst with research group IDC estimates the number of households with a network-based home automation system will increase from just over 4m last year to 16.8m by 2010, representing almost one in eight US homes.

Most industry executives and analysts agree the increase is due to factors such as the emergence of short-range wireless mesh networking technologies including ZigBee (802.15.4), a standards-based networking technology designed for control systems; Z-Wave, developed by Zensys and backed by 125 companies including Intel and Intermatic; and Smarthome’s Insteon power-line/wireless technology.

All three systems provide big advantages over the 31-year-old X10 power-line signalling and control standard. Wireless technologies also make it simpler and cheaper to fit an existing home with control technology. “Wireless just makes it so much easier,” says Mr Gaw, who feels it is too early to pick a winner from the competing and incompatible technologies.

There is also the booming sales of digital flat panel technologies and their integration into home theatre systems. “People buy a flat panel TV, put it on the wall and lay out an average of 4.5 remote controls and can’t figure out how to watch a movie,” says Will West, Control4’s chief executive. That is when they start thinking about an easy-to-use media controller with a single remote control.

Mr West says Control4’s customers often start by buying the company’s $595 home theatre media controller and then “add lighting, heating and other household controls”. Mr Lucero adds: “We think that entertainment control has the ability to be a ‘bridge application’.”

At the same time, the growth of digital audio and video content is driving demand for whole-house media distribution systems such as the Sonos family of wireless networked digital music systems which, like some whole-home control systems, allow users to play digital music in any room from a handheld device.

Similarly, Apple Computer’s announcement this week that it plans to enter the market for home-distributed media systems early next year with a streaming video wireless set-top box dubbed by Steve Jobs the ‘iTV,’ could also fuel interest in more extensive home automation. The iTV box, at $299, will allow music, television shows and films on a computer to play on a television elsewhere in the house.

Ás Mr Lucero notes: “After decades as a niche technology applicable mainly to technophile hobbyists and the wealthy, home automation looks poised to overcome the customer education challenge and become a mass-market, mainstream consumer application.”

On, off, up, down - any time, anywhere

The Taylor household has been in a state of more- than-usual turmoil for the past year as our 1970s home was expanded and remodelled. So my wife was not too surprised when I wanted to replace our three-room-distributed audio setup with a Control4 home-automation system.

A few weeks later Control4 installed a state-of-the-art trial system. The core system is built around Control4’s media controller, multichannel amplifier and tuner, all hooked up to my home-theatre system and a $929 Sony DVP-CX777ES DVD system that stores and plays back up to 400 DVDs or audio discs. DVDs loaded into the Sony player show up as playback options on the Control4 “video” playback menu alongside television channel and audio playback options.

The media controller comes with an 80Gb hard drive that can store digital MP3 music files for playback over the network to any room. I hooked up an external hard drive packed with my ripped compact disc collection.

Best of all I can monitor the system, adjust settings and control features from anywhere with an internet connection and standard web browser. I have yet to tire of surprising my wife at home by switching the lights on or off or changing television channels from my office personal computer.

At home the system can be controlled from a handheld multifunction remote control, a gorgeous 10.5in touch screen “tablet” or separate wall and mini touch screen desktop remotes in the main rooms. Lighting and other functions, such as the garage door, can be operated using these controllers or wireless wall switches.

I have our outside porch and garage lights set to switch on at sunset and off at midnight: since the system is hooked up to my broadband cable connection it knows what time sunset is. The internet connection also enables the system to be accessed remotely and updated by Control4.

The basic system parameters and settings are accessible from a home PC hooked up to the same Wi-Fi network used by the Control4 system using a Control4 program called Navigator; the interface for this is also simple and easy to use.