Wayne-Dalton, a leading manufacturer of garade doors for new home manufacturers, is also leading the charge for Z-wave home automation technology by delivering Pro-Drive garage door solutions to new homes across the US, and offering a vast array of z-wave controllers and modules to extend those systems.

We tested a variety of Wayne-Dalton z-wave products in a new home of one of our writers that happens to have the Wayne Dalton Pro-Drive system.  In just a few minutes, in addition to operating the garage door, we were turning lights on and off either from the car or from one of the scene remotes in the home.

A few minutes later, we swapped out a light switch and added an outlet module and developed a low-light mood-scene for watching TV in the living room.

Next, we plugged the USB stick into the computer, and we were setting "scenes" and operating devices all around the house using a visual interface that looked like a floor diagram of the home.

More recently, we attended the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and the folks at Wayne-Dalton introduced us to a whole slew of new z-wave devices that are coming out soon, including a TV remote and a control gateway, basically a Windows CE computer the size of a small router that connects to the internet and allows any internet connected computer to control anything in our ever-expanding z-wave enabled home.  More importantly, this smart gateway device also monitors the status of the entire z-wave mesh network and automatically updates the most efficient routing of these networked devices.

Our next project is to create an "event" program, basically home control if-then sequence using motion sensors, maybe to reduce the temperature on the z-wave enabled thermostat when they system notices that the garage door has opened and closed and there is no longer any movement in the house, or bump the temperature up when the garage door opens and we return.

For more information on Wayne-Dalton z-wave enabled devices, visit www.wayne-dalton.com/access/access.asp.