At Your Command: $3,000 Electronic Butler

----------------------------------------------------------------- Product information:

Mastervoice Butler-in-a-Box is manufactured by Automated Voice Systems Inc., Yorba Linda, Calif., (714) 524-4488. Suggested retail price: $2,995. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Gus Searcy bounds through the door at the end of the day and says, "I'm home."

The air conditioning begins cooling, lights adjust to his liking, curtains open and the stereo plays soft, soothing jazz.

If he says, "Party time," a different chain of events occurs. The fire pit by his pool ignites, outdoor lighting spotlights the geyser in his backyard pond and the security system will know that it shouldn't turn on until early the next morning.

In the middle of the night, if one of his three children gets out of bed, lamps will turn on to light their path, a reassuring voice will greet them with a "Hello," and Searcy and his wife, Kathleen, will be alerted that "children have left bedrooms."

Recently, the voice helping to run Searcy's Yorba Linda, Calif., household was Angela. The soft-spoken, subservient Angela - who sounded a little like Barbara Eden in "I Dream of Jeannie" - was a fabricated personality that inhabited a computer called the Mastervoice Butler in a Box. When Searcy tired of Angela, he could program the box to sound like Betty Boop, a snobby British butler or a seductress.

Sound weird? Well, it is. That's because the electronic butler is ahead of its time.

Searcy dreamed up the $3,000 product after getting razzed by friends at a Super Bowl party. Searcy's first professional career was working as a magician. Despite his talent and training - which helped him earn a healthy living in the late 1970s - Searcy still had to get up out of his chair to turn on the lights. His friends viewed this as a glaring shortcoming.

So he set out to design a home-automation system that would prove them wrong.

As chance would have it, it was Searcy's background as a magician that set him apart in this new venture. To him, subtlety was more important than sophisticated circuitry. "I wanted it to be like Thing on "The Addams Family," Searcy explains. "It had to be everywhere, but nowhere."

The Butler in a Box is a lot like Thing, a severed hand that lived in a box atop a table in the Addams Family mansion. If the family needed something, they summoned Thing.

The small and unobtrusive black box in which Angela lives works much the same way. The main difference is that Angela uses a microprocessor, or a computer chip, and electrical wiring to do her job.

The microprocessor communicates with the house by sending out a series of pulses though the electrical and telephone wiring. These pulses work like Morse code, with a specific command attached to each sequence of blips.

The codes are read by modules installed in a home's telephone and electrical outlets. By plugging an appliance into one of these modules, it can be controlled by Angela.

In Searcy's six-bedroom, six-bath house, the box controls about 170 items. It monitors all the doors and windows, operates an automatic pool cleaner and even ensures that Searcy's Jacksonian chameleon has the constant stream of fresh, falling water it needs to survive.

What distinguished the Butler in a Box when it hit the market is its flexibility.

It can carry out commands in a wide variety of ways. Voice commands is one way. It also can manipulate items in the house by accepting commands through a touch-tone telephone. Punch in a two-digit code and you can turn on the security system; another will enable you to adjust your thermostat.

The software also can program the system to use logic to respond to both time and situations.

The outdoor lighting is set to go on and off, not at specific times of the day, but by the astrological calendar. That way the lights will go on at sunset, whether that's at 6:30 p.m. or 8:30 p.m.

Say it starts raining and the sprinkler system is scheduled to turn on. The Butler can read sensors that detect moisture. It knows that if there's rain, the sprinklers should shut down.

If this sounds like a gee-whiz toy to you, think again.

What Searcy designed in 1983 is becoming a red-hot product category today.

In January, Compaq Computer said it is entering the home-automation business to make its personal computers more useful to consumers. Many others have followed suit, announcing new products in the past year.

These companies aim to cater to consumers' increasing need for convenience and security.

Though Searcy's Mastervoice Butler in a Box product line may not be a household name, its technology has not gone unrecognized.

The Butler in a Box is part of the Smithsonian Institution's collection and is used in the "Future House" at Disney World's Epcot Center in Orlando, Fla. Among Searcy's customers are William Shatner of "Star Trek" and the owner of the home where the movie "Clueless" was filmed.