Patent ID: 7092772

Claim:
A home automation system comprising: a plurality of remotely controlled switches, each of the remotely controlled switches being settable to a selected device address; a messenger hub that is adapted to transmit messages through an electrical power line for controlling the remotely controlled switches; and a hand-held remote transmitter for selectively transmitting commands to the messenger hub through a first set of electromagnetic wave signals and adapted to selectively transmit commands to one or more home electronic devices through a second set of electromagnetic wave signals, the messenger hub adapted to be responsive to a corresponding portion of the commands to activate one or more of the remotely controlled switches, the home electronic devices adapted to be responsive to another corresponding portion of the commands to selectively operate the home electronic devices, the hand-held remote transmitter including: a first switch having a plurality of zones, each of the zones being associated with a set of device addresses, the first switch being selectively positionable into a desired zone, the set of device addresses including one or more of the device addresses to which the remotely controlled switches are set; at least one second switch, each second switch being associated with a single device address in the set of device addresses in response to the positioning of the first switch into a desired zone such that operation of one of the second switches causes the hand-held remote transmitter to generate a command that causes the messenger hub to generate a message to activate any remotely controlled switch that has been set to a device address corresponding to the single device address; a plurality of mode selector buttons, each signal produced by actuation of each of the mode selector buttons programmed to correspond to an associated one of the home electronic devices; and a plurality of feature control buttons, wherein operation of one of the mode selector buttons associates at least a portion of the feature control buttons with a given one of the home electronic devices to thereby permit a user to operate the given home electronic device.