Home Director tours country

Jan. 1, 2001
Electrical professionals can experience the world of home networking without packing up their bags and jumping on an air-plane. A 45-foot wired home on wheels could be stopping at a trade show near you. Jack Dennehy, national event manager for Home Director, is driving the Intelligent Home Lifestyle Motor Coach from coast to coast for nine months to promote home networking. Morrisville, N.C.-based

Electrical professionals can experience the world of home networking without packing up their bags and jumping on an air-plane. A 45-foot wired home on wheels could be stopping at a trade show near you. Jack Dennehy, national event manager for Home Director, is driving the Intelligent Home Lifestyle Motor Coach from coast to coast for nine months to promote home networking. Morrisville, N.C.-based Home Director, a spin-off of the IBM Home Networking Solutions unit, hires electricians and other professionals as integrators for its program.

"We figured out that electricians are doing structured wiring," Dennehy said. "We're looking to bring them on board to use our program. We can come to them to train their people."

Home Director renovated an old motor coach into a wired "home" to show builders and installers how the program works.

"We took the empty shell, which looked like the inside of a tin can, and had it built to my specs," Dennehy said. "I then wired the whole thing and had the outside decaled with graphics."

The coach, which was parked outside the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, attracted attendees at Forum 2000, a home networking conference. Dennehy said that as of mid-June, Home Director has sold about 14,905 units with the bus.

"They like to see a functional demo in a home on wheels," Dennehy said. "It does a lot to sell our system."

Dennehy can signal a DVD to play the same movie on two different televisions, dim a lamp from a PC or snap a still image with the security camera.

"Any time an intruder breaks a circuit, the alarm will go off and the system will call you," Dennehy said. "The security system will take images that you can then send to the police."

Homeowners also have the system installed for improved home entertainment.

"You can take the information in the entertainment center and distribute it throughout the house," he said. "If you can think about it, we can do it."

Dennehy said the motor coach helps spread the word about Home Director, which recently partnered with Motorola and Cisco.

"The market is moving fast and changing quickly," Dennehy said. "We have a lot of major investors in our company that are going to allow us to move faster in the marketplace."

Visit www.homedirector.net to learn more about how to become a home integrator.

About the Author

Amy Florence Fischbach

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