Open source web based home automation
NCT writes “Here’s some great opensource DIY Home automation software, written in Perl with a Web interface. For windows or Linux/unix. It also works with the One Wire Weather station posted a few days ago.” MisterHouse is an open source home automation program. It’s fun, it’s free, and it’s entirely geeky. Written in Perl, it fires events based on time, web, socket, voice, and serial data. It currently runs on Windows 95/98/NT/2k/XP and on most Unix based platforms, including Linux and Mac OSX. Link.
Good one for next year! Ryan writes “Most of us remember the popular memory game Simon from the late 70’s. In this hack, I converted simon to play on a christmas wreath. Bust this out next year along with some egg nog and impress your friends with a non-traditional wreath decoration.” 
Dan writes “Build the ultimate garage door monitor, if you like home automation, you will definitely like this. This How-To shows how to monitor the exact position of the garage door, and display its status in your touchscreen interface (in this case, Main Lobby). A lot of details, but easy to understand.”
Claude writes “My newyear present for all makers: Industrial Design DIY chess pieces out of nuts and bolts, brass and steel. I had seen a picture of similar chess figures in a book about chess, so i decided to build my own using commonly found 8mm nuts, bolt and other metallic pieces, some glue (to fix parts to base, which is a 14mm nut)”. 
“Mark McKeown loved the classic RCA Theremin so much that he built one to spec from scratch, down to the vintage power supply, coils, and cabinet. With authentic tubes and other details, this near-perfect replica can reproduce the instrument’s sound far better than a cheap kit. Mark includes links to resources for specs and supplies if you want to try it yourself.” [
MAKE photo pool member Shufflehacks writes “I built my own radio-transmitter for my Shuffle, I nicknamed it “iMouse”. It works quite easy, there is a power switch on the bottom to turn it on. Just press play on the Shuffle and tune your radio to the right frequency. The range is about 100 to 150 meters.(500 feet) Now I can enjoy my Shuffle on my car stereo.” 
“Oww is a software project, to communicate with the Dallas 1-wire weather station and other 1-wire sensors, presenting live weather readings, logging data to file, uploading data to weather Web sites, and sending data to other programs through a command line interface.” Thanks Jason!