I'm trying to determine how best to go about giving my house a soul (good or bad to be determined, but I know where I'm putting my money). Of course, this is a new project after getting O'Reilly's Smart Home Hacks book for Christmas from my sister. She's just fueling the gadget fire. ;)

The first question lies in how I want to approach this. There are a couple of primary things I want the system to handle while accomplishing some small tasks:

• Web-access - Specifically via my laptop, work, or cell-phone (non-wap)
• Easily setup & scriptable - I'm tired of fooling around with too low-level hacks and spending all my time just getting them going.
• Work from a Mac - I primarily use a Powermac G5 that I can begin testing with and then move it to a dormant Beige G3 sitting in the basement. Of course, there is still that rumor of a possibly headless Mac at MWSF
• Prefer USB
• Audrey Interface

The options are: Indigo, XTension, MisterHouse for software; and using the PowerLinc USB, PowerLinc Serial, or ActiveHome CM11A Serial computer interface modules.
Nothing appears to meet all my needs yet. I think I prefer Indigo with the PowerLinc USB, but Indigo is (1) Expensive, when compared to free, and (2) doesn't natively provide a web-interface, but requires another ACGI dispatcher for $35.

There are trial versions of all the above packages. So I can give them a try. The first step is to get a controller box. For some reason, I'm leaning towards the PowerLinc USB, since then I don't have to buy & deal with a USB-Serial dongle, but that seems to be of questionable support, for some reason. So I'll probably get the CM11A and stay with compatability for the time being.