Raspberry Pi DIY
I'm having a lot of fun messing around with the raspberry pi. After installing raspbian, I booted up, logged in, and ran:
apt-get install vim ruby owfs gnuplot
I went through a box of electronics junk and dug up a 1-Wire Adapter and a couple of Hygrochrons. I plugged them in and, with not very much ruby at all, I had a little IP-connected temperature/humidity logger.
It came together a lot faster than I thought it would thanks to the owfs package (which takes all the modules on a 1-Wire bus and exports them to a simple filesystem). I was amping up for bit-banging the 1-Wire protocol on one of the gpio pins before I stumbled on the owfs package (already pre-built for raspbian, mind you).
Next, flip on a giant pc fan whenever the temperature goes above a threshold to keep my gear in my media closet cool. Then, install SiriProxy so I can use Siri commands to turn on/off lights and set the thermostat temp in the media room. I'm also thinking about how to run a cable from the media room down to the garage to detect when garage door is open and use Siri to open/close it.
