Our home is partially automated.  What does that mean?  Well, the house doesn't cook our meals and put us to bed, nor does it order milk for us when we run out.  But it does let us turn lights and appliances on and off, control our heating, monitor security systems and computer networks, operate our home theatre, and integrate all this with Internet-available information like weather forecasts.  We can control all this by remote controls, Web interface, voice recognition, or from our computers, and some of it happens automatically in response to motion detectors and timers.

Sounds obscure, expensive, and complicated, right?  Wrong: most of the components are under $30 and simply plug right into the wall.  While a lot of companies would have you believe this is the "house of the future", most of this has been available, affordable, and easy for decades.  You can get started for about $50, and if you know how to program your VCR, you know more than enough to get your feet wet.

Most of what I have comes from HomeSeer, the best home automation software on the market.  They also sell most of the hardware I use (my current system is almost all Z-Wave).

I've also written a lot of scripts and web pages for HomeSeer.  Some of these are found on the HomeSeer forums.  However, due to some mistreatment by administrators of those forums, I moved most of my support for my more popular and ongoing scripts to a blog.  You can find support for Rover (a complete, compatible, compact web interface suitable for use on handhelds, cell phones, older browsers, slower connections, etc.); Network Monitor (adds network monitoring to HomeSeer); Time Icons (replaces the standard time icons with ones showing the actual time, moon phase, etc.); and X-10 to Z-Wave Bridge (a one-liner to use X-10 controllers and motion sensors to control Z-Wave devices).