Ancient peoples built their dwellings with mud and twigs. Ancient Romans used stones and marble. And ancient 20th-century houses had quaint things called light switches and thermometers with silly little dials on them. With the new millennium came a slew of new protocols for wirelessly automating home functions such as lighting, temperature, and security. In theory, those should be as easy to install as they are to use. In theory is the operative phrase here.

Home-automation products rely on low-power, low-strength data transmissions on a mesh network to control simple systems within a house. Home automation has been around for decades, of course, but it's been clunky and expensive; systems generally had to be installed by a professional. The new generation of devices is much more affordable and can be installed in a few hours by ordinary mortals—or at least that's the claim.

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There are three major protocols embraced by device manufacturers. Z-Wave, created by Danish company Zensys, is a popular protocol supported by hundreds of different devices. ZigBee is another common protocol, but it's used mostly for commercial applications. The final standard is SmartLabs' Insteon, the successor to the X10 protocol that dominated the field for years. It relies mainly on powerline communication, but it also uses RF signals.

To help you sort it all out, we selected three volunteers from across the country with differing needs, presented them with starter kits from major manufacturers, and watched them install the equipment to see if the average homeowner can actually use this stuff—and if the products performed as claimed.