The house wakes Deutsch up just the way he likes it: with a smooth computerized voice emanating from high-end speakers telling him the time and the temperature outside. His bathroom lights sense when someone enters, then automatically brighten. Five minutes of movement cause a ventilation fan to start spinning, and if Deutsch decides to turn on the television that sits just in front of the toilet, he can watch a lot more than NBC's "The Today Show." The TV communicates via X-10 radio frequency with the home theater in his den and several small cameras, so he can enjoy movies playing on his VCR, live footage of his backyard, the San Francisco Bay or his garage.

He can also make changes from afar. Because the system can be run from a secure Web page, he can use any computer with an Internet connection to control the lights, thermostat, garage and other X-10-retrofitted products. Or, if he's relaxing on his black leather couch and can't find the right remote -- which is quite likely since they litter the house like dust -- Deutsch can simply tell the appliance what to do. His home networking software has a voice recognition component that lets him send commands through a wireless microphone.

"Home automation is a nice hobby to keep me away from work," says Deutsch, a 42-year-old ventilation and safety device salesman who figures he's spent 30 hours building a better condominium. "I'm trying to make my house as smart as possible."

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"Smart homes" have long been a geek obsession -- as well as a first step to the greater goal of a completely networked "smart world." Major companies like Compaq, IBM, Palm, Intel and Microsoft have invested millions in new technologies that aim to cash in on a home automation market that's predicted to be worth $8 billion in three years.

But X-10 is already here. A communications protocol that utilizes a low-voltage signal to network appliances across ordinary household electric lines, or over the public radio spectrum, X-10 compatible products and software are spreading fast through geekdom. Deutsch's X-10 tinkering is hardly unique. Thousands of X-10 fans are quietly creating homes that edge closer and closer to science fiction. Whether or not you look forward to a future in which every object -- animate and inanimate -- is connected and communicating to everything else, X-10 fans are going to take us there. X-10 technology is not new, although the expiration of the X-10 patent several years ago is believed to have accelerated grass-roots adoption. Some X-10 users first started toying with the protocol as early as 20 years ago, when it first came out. But today, there's little doubt that the phenomenon has reached critical mass. Users fill Web forums, sending each other tips ideas and free software that make X-10 products smarter than ever. Hundreds of X-10 compatible products have hit the market since the late '90s, and sales, vendors report, continue to grow at a rate of 30 to 50 percent each year.

X-10 is hardly perfect, however. Even the most ardent fans complain about X-10's 0.7-second transmission delays; others bemoan the ubiquitous pop-up ads from X10 Wireless Technology, a Seattle company that sells products through X10.com, and is a spinoff of the company that originally held the X-10 patent. But those who are part of the X-10 community overlook the annoyances, they say, because the technology has reached a point where it is both affordable and adaptable.

No other home automation system hits the geek sweet spot so directly. When it's possible to make an electronic appliance remote-controlled by simply buying a $6 plug-in adapter, and when the average three-bedroom home can be "X-10'd" and Web-enabled for less than $2,000, why not make your home a bit smarter? Why not make the house of the future a present-day reality?

X-10 Wireless Technology filed in August of 2000 for a $75 million IPO, but the SEC documents related to the offering leave a lot to the imagination. They show that X10 Ltd., a Bermuda company based in Hong Kong, spun out of the wireless division in 1997. They reveal that the company is moving beyond lights and into wireless cameras; and they note that revenues skyrocketed from $134,000 in 1997 to more than $6 million in 2000 -- although still not enough to make the company profitable.

Further details about the company are hard to gather -- even Alex Peder, the CEO, doesn't know exactly when the patent expired or what the protocol was originally created for. He also had little to say about how X-10 planned to compete against CEBus -- a technology released by several large corporations in 1992. CEBus costs more than X-10 but improves on it by sending faster pulses down the electrical wires.

But geeks who have followed X-10 from the start say that the company's history can be boiled down to a single idea: New technologies get less expensive with age and then steadily become more attractive to consumers. "I first wanted to use X-10 in the '70s when I first saw it, but it was too horrendously expensive." says Ted Seeber, a software engineer who started buying X-10 products two years ago for his Beaverton, Ore., home. "When it comes to building supplies, cheap is king."

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