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

Wow, Almaz. Never thought I'd hear that name again.

I wonder, what science do they think people will be using this for? I guess it could replace some of the Shuttle-only payloads we used to fly, but for anything else the ISS is a much more capable research laboratory. I should know, keeping them doing science is my job these days.

I guess it might have better downmass? Usually, though, you only want to bring it home if you think the long term exposure effects are interesting. This won't be very long term.

All that said, very cool, and the more the merrier!

Back when the Bush Vision for Space Exploration was started up, the Congressman for the area around Johnson Space Center was Tom Delay, the Speaker of the House. Now, it is someone with much less clout. I think this is really just a return to not having friends in high places (be those friends ever so scumbagish).

I think we have to question why, at the precise moment in history when a US commercial space flight company is nearing completion of the first ever non-government rocket AND manned space craft, we want to develop another rocket on government funds. Let SpaceX use any NASA facilities they need, and if they succeed with the Falcon/Dragon then give them a contract. That could be as soon as 2011!

NASA should aim for the next big leap after rockets. Take all that ARES money and invest in laser propulsion, nuclear propulsion, space fountains, VASIMR derivitives, who knows. THAT is the way to really bust space wide open for the common man. That is the way to make sure that when when our astronauts meet the Chinese astronauts on the moon, they will be offering individual bottles of beer and we will be sharing entire coolers of beer. Even if they got their beer there before us.

(For those of you worried about the international rammifications of sharing American beer in space, NASA is partnering with the Canadians. The Canadians can be in charge of robotic manipulators and malt beverages.)

NASA: "We'd like you to hover for a few hours dangling a cable."

Pilot: "Boring!"

NASA: "Oh, and several teams will be shooting lasers in your direction."

Pilot: "Now you're talking!"

The F-22 is already in service! They just cancelled the next order of planes.

I agree with this decision. The F-35 is still a better fighter than just about anything else out there, and is also an excellent multi-role attack craft. Not to mention much cheaper per unit than an F-22.

The value of the F-22 lies in that it is probably the best fighter in the world for many years. Any adversary who intends to fight a conventional war against the US (cricket... cricket... but hey, we do expect our military to be prepared, so I'm not complaining) has to act as if the most badass fighter in the world will be contesting air superiority. That is a healthy kick towards solving things with diplomacy.

I'd certainly love the switches to be cheaper, but lets be realistic. My house is worth (in this oh-so-wonderful housing market) $170,000. To automate all switches, computer control, whole house music, all that good stuff, would be about $5000 using a mixture of Insteon, X10, and IR. That's 3% of the house, spread over as many years as needed. That assumes I'd do all the work, of course, but this stuff is so easy you'd be crazy not to.

So for 3% of the value of my house, not even caring about any added value the automation gives the house, I can fully automate my house. Not $1 a switch, but hardly that bad.

It baffles me that no one has adapted David Drake's "Redliners" to the big screen. I would have thought it would be a movie long before "The Forever War".

They are both excellent books written by Vietnam vets about the alienation that soldiers feel from the society that sent them off to fight. "The Forever War" is the better book, but it gets that status from book virtues: deep thought, character development, and the reader's imagination about what society looks like each time the main character returns from a mission.

"Redliners", while a more simple story, paints things with a broader brush that I figure makes a better movie. Try reading the first chapter, it's in the Baen free library.