I dunno, I'm a pretty big nerd and I love my iPhone. There's plenty of fun to be had with it with the serial tx/rx on the dock connector. I'm getting close to getting it to work with a Picaxe, and once that works the sky is the limit.

Disclaimer: I work for the space program, but I'm not high enough to make these decisions.

Some people will never be happy. All the dreams of the last 50 years are about to come true, and all people can do is bitch!

Look, chemical powered rockets have not changed much since the development of the SSME. So why are we only now getting private space launch? Because there was nowhere reasonable to go! ISS cargo is an easy enough mission for non-cutting edge rocketry, and since it is manned there is a long term need for supply flights that won't go away.

The future looks like this:
1. NASA guarantees it be buy x flights at y price from now until 2020.
2. Multiple vendors (currently SpaceX, Orbital, Lockheed, Boeing, and others) use this promise to secure capital to develop launchers.
3. Several years of regular supply flights gives ample qualification of the new boosters.
4. Once confidence is gained, NASA transitions from buying human flights from Russians to buying flights from Americans. Lots of politicians get reelected.
5. All the tech for better than chemical rocket launch now has a concrete mission to design for. Someone perfects laser ablative launch of cargo to ISS and does it much cheaper. Someone else gets an even cheaper launch option going.
6. NASA works on designs for solar system manned exploration craft. Design is steady and largely free from political pressure.
7. Private cargo launch matures, and one day both it and the NASA designs are ready.
8. ISS, which is now a largely private operation, is sold off or deorbited at its end of life.
9. NASA (and hell, maybe even private spacecraft) launch on commercial boosters and usher in a new era.

Look, promises smomishes. Unfunded mandates scmuded fandates. This is the ONLY way to get beyond LEO in a sustained manner by the 2050s ( when I will retire). You all should be overjoyed.

I know it isn't a huge market, but the iPad is huge news in the home automation touchscreen market. Official solutions sell for over $1k, and you'd be hard pressed to make your own (ebay'd touchscreen, plus a fanless computer mounted in the wall) for less than the cheapest iPad.

Make a wall cradle for it with speakers, and you have control, audio, pictures (for when not in use), not to mention if you can make it show you a weather report in the morning or something.

Indigo Touch is impressive enough that I had long planned to buy iPod touches and wall-mount them, the iPad just makes that idea even better.

Knowing this can be done, I bet this would be pretty easy to make.

You'd take a pan and tilt servo controlled laser, and put sound sensors around the laser. Move the laser towards the loudest noise, fire when the noise is equal on the sensors. Bingo, dead mosquito. Just like a sun tracker!

Everything else is software, like knowing what frequency to listen to mosquitos on.

Does anyone know:
1. How much laser power do you need to kill a mosquito?
2. What frequency noise do you target?
3. Is it shark-mountable?

Man, you are way off. Firefly was primarily a story about a really cool guy who wore Hawaiian shirts, played with plastic dinosaurs, married a total badass wife, made funny (ding!) informative (ding!) and insightful comments (ding!), and occasionally flew the ship.

It is no wonder that a show without the main character would lose some appeal.

The first two points in the article cancel each other out. To paraphrase, they are:

1. It costs too much, so no one flies experiments, and
2. There are too many experiments for the crew to handle.

No one goes there anymore, it is too busy. -- Yogi Berra

If the ISS is kept running for 5 years, we will get more out of the fifth year than we did the first year. If it is kept running 10 years, we will get more out of the 10th year than the 5th year. Launch cost will be dropping regardless of the fate of Ares, and as current research opens up new research the demand for space launch capabilities will increase. Remember, in the absolutely most boring future, the Russians could build a second Progress assembly line. The probable success of SpaceX just makes that better (notably in the "return of material" area.

Now, is any of this worth it? That's more of a policy decision than a technical one. I think it is, half for the science and half for the global cooperation required. Remember, this International Space Station represents the efforts of 2/3 of the planet (land area-wise, heh, not population). When is the last time that has happened without there being a war in progress?

... is it pronounced "O-knee-der" or "O-ned-der"?

You know, every time it does that thing it does.

Geez man, how long does that take you? You might want to look into a back-up hobby for when the little guy finally gets it.

Forgot to ask: What do you use for the car RFID transmitter? I use cell phone bluetooth to tell who is home, and I'm not a big fan. Detecting cars in the garage would be much more useful to me.

Thanks.

Rock on, I use those same Harbor Freight mats hooked up to X10 DS10As. Ah, the DS10A, the swiss army knife of HA.

Well, we all need hobbies. What do you do with your time when the Internet is not letting you judge complete strangers?

By all means! The basics are here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-A-Motorized-Window-Blinds-Controller-For-Les/

Biochemtronics is the man for posting that. My notes on modifications are in the comments.

Good hunting!

Oh, it's expensive, no question. The $2k includes the Cube ($400), the IR emitter/receiver (an iRed, $120), and what, $400 for two iPhones? Something like that. So that leaves $1k for the switches and software.

Sounds like a lot, but it's not bad when you spread it over a few years.

I have been automating my home for some time now, and I hope I can give you some perspective on the process.

Modern (as in, not X10) home automation hardware comes with a steep cost of entry. For my chosen flavor (Insteon), you have to buy $60 worth of phase couplers / wireless receivers and a $80 powerline - computer interface before you can even start adding wall switches. So, unless you are just wildly flush with cash, there usually has to be a need as well as the want to get started.

For me, my house is wired to that the driveway light switch are out in the detached garage. This was very irritating. By replacing the switch in the garage and the switch by the back door of the house with Insteon switches, I can now turn on the driveway lights from within the house. Cheaper than hiring an electrician to re-wire the switches.

Once the initial hurdle is passed, you can do all sorts of things quickly and easily. Such as:

1. I added a wireless switch at knee level so my 2-year old can turn on the light in her room. She LOVES this. A motion sensor turns the light off 15 minutes after she leaves. When she's older I'll set it up so she turns the light off, but I didn't want her flashing the lights on/off/on/off for an hour.
2. The wall switch in the living room can also start/stop music playing, as well as control the volume and change songs.
3. Using some ir-controlled home made window blind controllers I built, the blinds on the first floor of the house are controlled by the computer. Most notably, it shuts them when the sun goes down, so I don't have to worry about people seeing into the house after dark. I got real used to that real fast, let me tell ya.
4. I've put together a "Baby Monitor of the Gods" that sends video (with sound) from an old DV camcorder to any screen in the house (mostly old laptops running Damn Small Linux loaded into RAM, but also either of the TVs). In the workout room the video comes up on the picture-in-picture, so my wife can see the baby sleeping while she exercises. Very popular feature, that.
5. The library did not have a wall switch. Now it does. (It turns on the lamps.)
6. I'm leaving out the basic stuff, such as being able to control a light across the house from the bedroom. Very nice when you are getting ready for bed.
7. Everything is also controllable from our iPhones.
8. Next up is door locks, and after that probably HVAC. Part of me really wants to do computer controlled zoned HVAC, but the other part hates working in the attic. Choices, choices.

All of this runs from a Mac Cube running Indigo. I cannot say enough good things about Indigo, it is one truly great piece of home automation software.

So to sum up, the state of home automation is fantastic. With the relay control modules, you can control just about anything. Add IR control to that and there's not much left beyond your reach. Blind and drapes control is very expensive to buy off the shelf for some reason, but building your own is easy enough.

Good luck (and keep count of how many times you mix up the load and line wires)!

Brian