Residents use control panels around the house to operate everything from the television and lights, to the washing machine and bathtub.

A parent, for instance, can program the home's wireless network to run a bath for their child, or even to water the garden -- with less water wastage. Another eco-friendly feature: residents can recycle "grey" water from showers, sinks and baths -- and use it to flush toilets.

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Temperatures can be individually set for each room in the house -- and climate controls allow residents to calibrate heating or cooling systems to the time they actually spend in the room.

"It is a research centre, it is a real usability lab," said Jon Carter, the project manager for Orange at Home, an experiment in futuristic living led by British mobile phone operator Orange, in partnership with the Universities of Surrey and Portsmouth. (Orange is owned by France Telecom.)

"We have cameras everywhere, microphones, and we will have real people, real families living in the house for periods of time," Carter said.

"But more than that, it's understanding the social interaction. How people interact with technology, how it changes their lives."

The house, in fact, has already hosted its first residents -- a five-member family from the area who spent two weeks living within its walls from April 7 to 21. There are no immediate plans for new residents, though a project spokeswoman said there is "no doubt" other people will experience the house.

'Wildfire', make a cup of coffee!

It's not just panels on the wall that activate the technology in the house.

You can also talk to the house itself by wearing a headset -- ordering the home's interactive fairy, "Wildfire," to make you a cup of coffee in the kitchen, run the washing machine, or turn the television on and off.

The house cost around $2.8 million to equip, and for Orange the purpose is to discover which products people will buy.

As Carter explains: "All too often companies go out there with products they think are going to completely kill the market -- and they don't. They find it's technology for the sake of it.

"You have heard about the screen fridge which orders your groceries, but do people actually want that? Or the Internet-connected washing machine. Do people want that level of technology?"

The appliances and equipment in the house do not only talk to "Wildfire" and the panels on the door. They also obey commands from your phone and handheld computer. So you can be driving home from work and tell your phone to turn the bath on.

And what better way to end an exhausting day spent turning things on and off and talking to all sorts of appliances, than retreating to your bedroom and catching a movie on your roll-down cinema screen?