iPad controlled home

Jake Wallis Simons meets a woman who can remote control her house by iPhone and iPad. She can even turn her children's TVs off from anywhere in the world
I do feel a little bit like I’m living in the future,” says Jane Gibson, coyly. “But you get used to things. Automation has become part of everyday life.”

Reader, if you harbour even the slightest Luddite tendency – if you worry about your children playing video games, dislike the idea of Kindles, or fret that social networking will make traditional friendships obsolete – look away now. When it comes to technology, the Gibson family pulls no punches.

In fact, they have built their lives around it. Almost every room in their 150-year-old, four-bedroom, stone farm house in Yorkshire has at least one television (the house has eight in total), all of which are centralised and can play any film or television show on demand. They also host a bewildering variety of computer games.

The heart of the house – or as Jane puts it, “the room we spend most of our lives in” – is a fully automated home cinema, with a seven-feet screen on which they can watch films, television and browse the internet. And when they’ve finished doing that, the two boys, Thomas, 14, and Ryan, 12, take over the big screen for some PlayStation fun (their favourite game at the moment is Assassin’s Creed).

“But they can’t just watch and play whatever they like,” says Jane. “Even if I’m out of the house, I can see exactly what they’re watching on my iPad. If I don’t approve, I can press the ‘lockout’ button and the screen will automatically go dead until the following morning.”