VentureBeat

Most VentureBeat readers are probably familiar with Back to the Future 2’s vision of home automation — appliances that hydrate pizzas at voice command, and thumbprint activated door locks. Now Intellipowered, a Texas-based home automation startup — is making even more modern versions of this home a reality (with five years to spare before 2015, even).

The company doesn’t just have one area of expertise — it’s goal is to make almost every electronic component in your home smarter, faster and, seemingly, voice or motion-activated. Here’s a brief overview of its offerings:

• Hidden surround sound in every room that responds to voice command.
• The ability to control music, lights, heating and air conditioning and even individual appliances remotely from your smart phone.
• Custom-designed lighting systems connected to smart remotes, making them adjustable from everywhere.
• So-called media rooms, also customized to specifications (and from the looks of it, including very comfy chairs).
• Water-resistant televisions and rugged speakers (some that look like rocks!) for outdoor entertainment on all occasions.
• Smart remotes combining the capabilities of your many, scattered, easily-lost-in-couch-cushions remotes, as well as power over ceiling fans, thermostats and surveillance cameras.
• And speaking of surveillance, cameras that detect motion, triggered by doorbells, etc.

This suite of products and services is tailored to give the company’s clients “power to control their surroundings,” as Intellipowered says over and over again on its web site. Acting as more of a consulting service than a technology supplier, it ties together a massive range of brands to convert homes, including big names like Bose, JVC, Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, Phillips and Sharp. The magic is in where and how these products are deployed and connected to each other.

Intellipowered gives the example of a person coming home from work past dark. By clicking one button on a compact home remote attached to their keychain, they set off a chain reaction: Sensing that it is night time, the smart home system immediately turns on lights in the garage, hallways and kitchen, disarms the alarm system, adjusts the thermostat to a comfortable temperature. Later that evening, the same person could give the simple voice command “Good night” to activate a new program shutting off the lights, engaging the surveillance and security systems, and readjusting the temperature for sleep mode. A computerized voice would even be able to respond to the individual with a status check of the house, current temperature and designated wakeup time.

Beyond this basic idea, Intellipowered provides a few other nerdishly cool capabilities: RFID-enabled pet tracking (never worry about Rex getting lost again), motion-sensor driveways that let you view via any screen who is approaching your home, smart pool monitoring that lets you adjust filters, temperatures, lights, etc. from any computer or phone, and, of course, a virtual media library storing all of your movies and music, and making them accessible from any room in the house (never buy a DVD again).

As you can guess, none of these improvements come cheap. There’s no better indication of this than the mega-mansion Intellipowered features on its homepage as the penultimate smart home. So for now, most of this is eye and brain candy. But it could very well be a preview of technologies that will slowly trickle down to the middle-class and mainstream markets. Centralized digital media centers are not too far-fetched, with companies like Boxee, Roku and others already aggregating and storing media purchased on the web. And dashboards showing and allowing adjustments in home energy consumption are already being installed by major utilities.

Speaking of energy monitoring — Intellipowered may be missing an opportunity to market itself more visibly under the banner of energy efficiency (it has one web page illuminating this aspect). The control it provides over lighting and HVAC systems already seems geared toward energy conservation. If thermostats and lights can be automatically and instantly shut off whenever you aren’t home, or whenever a room isn’t being used, a lot of energy could be saved. The company might want to emphasize these features in the future. Though, considering its prospective client base, saving money on monthly electricity bills might not be its most compelling selling point.

Editor’s note: This is part of VentureBeat’s series “Startup Spotlight.” Every week, we’ll sift through the scores of companies applying to be promoted and profile the best one. Companies can sign up here at the Entrepreneur Corner, which is currently sponsored by Microsoft. (Of course, you’ll still find lots of startup news and innovation in our day-to-day coverage.)

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Tags: co:Intellipowered