Notes from a small field

Possibly a little premature (not sold the current house yet!) but I’ve been pondering the opportunity for playing with home automation when we find a new house.

Not even having the house yet means I have a completely blank canvas so I’m on the look out for ideas. On the hardware side, Nigel has mentioned Arduino a few times which sounds pretty interesting, plus there’s the Slug option. Laptops seem to get used too but I’d rather avoid that. On the where to start side, Andy’s house uses MQTT, is in Second Life, Twitters, and has a pretty worrying power meter graph, which should provide a few ideas! He’s not the only one- it would seem that IBMers like their home automation projects. Like Glenn, low cost is high on my list of requirements (I will have just undergone open wallet surgery buying a house!) although I suspect my idea of low is lower than Glenn’s! I also want it to be low power- very low power, so I’m pondering some sort of mesh approach to avoid any kind of server… as such… just because really! I quite like the idea of giving the house a REST interface. I don’t want any fans. So a clear set of requirements there then.

Any thoughts, suggestions, success/horror stories?