Since I missed the May Home Automation Month, I really need to make up for it somehow. So here’s a quick video of Remoat (http://remoat.com), a little utility I’ve been putting together in my spare time. It’s not really production-ready, but I’ll make the source available for the hackers out there.

Currently it needs/supports the following:

• Windows Media Player: Plays music from your library.
• MiCasaVerde Vera: Allows you to turn on binary devices, such as lights that you’ve got configured.
• mControl 2.X: There’s some old code in the package from when I was running mControl on my WHS box (which had sequential disk failures and in the end killed my RAID –> switched to a QNAP NAS). Unsupported.
• Windows Vista/7 speech recognition: This is required (part of the operating system anyway).
• Windows text-to-speech: You can specify which audio device is used for speech output. This lets you hook up a pair of speakers that are always on and have the PC hooked up to you’re a/V system for better quality playback. Part of the operating system.

I'm usually not a fan of Christmas albums, but I really like Sarah McLachlan's new album Wintersong. Check it out on YMU. Check it out below. Luckily it's not just another artist's pension check.