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<\/a>4Home, maker of software that allows you to control all the appliances and electronics in your home from a central dashboard (spanning your television, computers and smart phones), has just raised $4.27 million in fourth-round equity, according to a filing with the SEC<\/a>. Riding the trend toward greater household automation, the Sunnyvale, Calif. company is poised to become a Smart Grid contender as well as a major home media service.<\/p>\nRight now, its offerings are indirectly related to the Smart Grid, but the potential is there. You can use the software to control some appliances remotely — particularly programmable thermostats. In the future, 4Home’s software could allow you to turn off your clothes dryer, dishwasher or even pool filter from your smart phone when you aren’t at home. The system can also be set up to track how much energy is being used overall or at the device level. This brings it into competition with a bevy of home energy management startups like Control4<\/a>, Tendril<\/a>, EnergyHub<\/a>, OpenPeak<\/a> and many more.<\/p>\n Still, the product’s coolest capabilities are related to media organization. For example, it can serve as a hub for all of your family’s music, movies, web videos and more — both storing them and delivering them to televisions, computers and even mobile devices on-demand. No longer do 4Home customers have to worry about some music being on one computer and not on another. They can stream any content they want at any time via almost any entertainment device.<\/p>\n A third functionality for the 4Home software is home surveillance. If customers have security cameras installed, recordings can be fed directly to the dashboard where they are accessible from anywhere. Eventually, you could go on vacation and check in to make sure your sprinklers came on at the appointed time, no matter where you are. Home surveillance is also an area of increasing consumer interest, demonstrated by recent investments in RelTel<\/a> and chip-maker Stretch<\/a>, and the rise of Ugolog<\/a>.<\/p>\n Recently, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, 4Home announced that it is partnering with Verizon Wireless to use 4G networks<\/a>, which are set to be rolled out in 25 to 30 markets in 2010. This will give 4Home users even more choices about what and how they can control their household devices from remote, even more distant locales.<\/p>\n 4Home has now raised more than $9 million to date. It previously brought in $4.88 million over three rounds of financing from Pond Ventures<\/a> among others. Most recently, it landed $525 million in convertible promissory notes in September 2009.<\/p>\n