How good are you with hardware? I'm building mine with rPi, Arduino, msp430, self-designed circuits (LM35 for temperature, phototransistor for light), COTS rela

How good are you with hardware? I'm building mine with rPi, Arduino, msp430, self-designed circuits (LM35 for temperature, phototransistor for light), COTS relay boards, all sorts of stuff I have lying about. I had thought about making it a serious design effort, but I hate doing printed circuit boards, and since you can buy this hobbyist stuff so cheap now, I usually just use what I can find cheap at the time. Someday I may put it all together after I've got the kinks worked out. Here are some sources: moderndevice.com, adafruit.com, sparkfun.com, pololu.com, mpja.com, taydaelectronics.com, surpluscenter.com, futurelec.com (flammable gas sensors, CO sensors, misc components), and then Allied, Digikey, Mouser, Future, etc. I used a cheap little relay breakout and 74HCT595's to control incandescent/halogen/fluorescent lights and 120VAC devices (search for "sainsmart relay"). Audio stuff came mostly from PartsExpress.com Good old X10 stuff works with OSX (it's just serial port controlled RF dongle), I think that new fancy Phillips HUE works with iOS, but it is mega expensive, you can create the same functionality from COTS parts for much less.