There was an old Perl based project called Mr. House ( http://misterhouse.sourceforge.net/ http://misterhouse.sourceforge.net/ ), though it hasn't seen activity

There was an old Perl based project called Mr. House ( http://misterhouse.sourceforge.net/ http://misterhouse.sourceforge.net/ ), though it hasn't seen activity in a few years. It tried to be vendor-neutral and (apparently) had voice controls, too, which sounded cool. I never had the money to set up the hardware, though, so I have no idea about it's actual abilities...