This invention is an intelligent home control bus. In one example, decoders have a constant current sink circuit that includes a shunt regulator that controls a field effect transistor. The exemplary method also comprises beginning a detection of modules of the machine-readable code comprising a data-matrix code at a predefinable distance from one of the lines. The sphere may be further divided into shells 11,12,13 of different radii corresponding to different categories of information items within the same subject area.