CA,
Several of us are technology veterans... and I'm sure some of us specailize in different technologies. That said, 'most' of the info given in this thread is accurate. Some is not. If you have a different way you think it should be done share your actual ideas, don't just blanketly insult people.
dmorel and myself posted accurate information, we may not be routing and security "experts" but I've seen nothing asked or presented that requires an expert... and there are very few experts I've ever met. A few and usually they are total bit heads.
Dmorel,
I have a ton of Home Automation (about 30 automated devices) with Voice Recognition and also running XBMC on my XBOX. I wrote a bit of Python to interface XBMC into my HA backend software, nothing fancy but looks nice and works perfectly to control my home lighting and events. I will expand it a bit more in the near future to automate things like... when XBMC starts a movie, it automatically triggers my HA software to ask (via voice) if I want to set the scene to watch a movie.
I wrote a ton of ASP to put a 'pretty face' and all-in-one access to my most used home automation functions - from the user perspective, not admin. So it looks pretty for guests that want to use the touchscreen. Most of the graphics are designed my me too... I wanted to learn Photoshop
Here's an page describing my setup... not 100% accurate anymore since I did change a few things:
http://members.cox.net/alevey/
Anyway... if you want to chat on it PM me and we can get together or chat on the phone. Much easier then the forum.
--
Aaron
half-bit head