Your smart home can seep into all aspects of your life. It helps you do those day-to-day tasks that can take up so much time, such as opening the draperies, dimming the lights, and flipping on the Weather Channel to seewhether the kids have a snow day. How far you go with your smart home depends on your lifestyle, budget, and tastes.

This section spends a virtual day in a fictitious smart home. Here’s the scenario: You, the reader, are part of a family of six, plus the requisite pets (we prefer dogs). You and your spouse both work, and the kids range in age from 8 to 17.

Starting Your Day

Anyone with kids knows the importance of keeping on a schedule. Your home network helps you do just that, in style.

At first light, you wake to your home-controlled alarm — a stream of pleasant classical music coming over your home-audio network into your bedroom. After a preset length of time, the music fades out and the TV kicks on to your favorite local station, where you can get the weather and traffic reports and information about any school closings or delays. Down the hall, the kids awaken to the music of their choice.

In the kitchen, the coffeemaker starts brewing your morning caffeine requirements. Select shades and drapes throughout the house open to let the day’s light stream in. It’s winter, so the towel warmers and the radiant heat in the bathrooms’ floors are turned on. The automatic pet door out back opens and lets the dog out for his morning constitutional.

By this time, you’re already in the kitchen making school lunches. Being the nice person you are, you take a cup of coffee to your spouse, who is listening to National Public Radio in the bathroom. As you finish setting out breakfast for the kids, a glance at the upstairs monitors shows that two of your four kids are still in bed. Your eldest son is videoconferencing with his girlfriend  on his computer. You punch the intercom and tell them all to get a move on.

As the children cycle into and out of the bathroom, the home-control system times their showers to make sure no one hogs the bathroom. The shower’s water temperature is just to their liking, but that’s hardly a surprise — it’s the same setting they use each day this time of year.

As you sit down to breakfast, your spouse comes running through, late for the office. A printout of major headlines and personal stock standings sits waiting in the printer, having been created and downloaded from the Internet overnight.

Your spouse works down the street (we did tell you that you work at home, didn’t we?), and your smart home knows that you both like a warm car when you get into a 15-degree garage, so the home controller starts the car  15 min-utes before the scheduled departure time. Before your spouse climbs inside the toasty car, the home-control system gives a verbal reminder to put the bottles and cans next to the curb because today is recycling day.

As your spouse leaves the garage, your home-control system talks to your phone system and redirects all of your spouse’s home-business line calls to the car phone. Once at work, a simple push of a speed dial button on the office phone dials in and redirects the calls again to your spouse’s office.

Back at home, you confirm that the kids caught the bus by using the video monitor in the kitchen, and then you get ready for work. You ask the home controller to put the house in your personal mode — in terms of temperature, music, lighting, drape settings, and anything else you may have set.