We've had a lot of people ask about the Marware EcoVue iPad case since mentioning on Twitter we had one on order.  We originally saw the EcoVue winning the round up of iPad cases on the Daily Giz Wiz show - see the video below - and ordered one from Amazon.  Even thought the Amazon delivery date still says '1-3 months' ours was despatched just 9 days after we ordered it.  Checkout some quick photos and our initial impressions after the jump...

In the second of our new "My Automated Home" series, Richard Farthing takes us on a tour of his Green Open Source House.  On a budget of less than £600 the Linux setup looks after property whilst keeping an eye on the carbon footprint too.  Read on for the free software recommendations, the Joggler photos, tips, the what he'd do differently next time and the what's coming next...

A few days ago we had a 27 minute power outage during a lightning storm near the Automated Home.  Not an unusual occurrence in itself - but this one was to be more significant.  After a few days of wailing and nashing of teeth here are the lessons learnt and why we now have an in-expensive but effective UPS on our server...

Automated Home reader and contributor Ant Skelton takes us on a tale of intrigue, mystery love and automation as he installs a microchip controlled pet access system.  Read on for the CCTV hilarity as the local feral population's attempts to break and enter are foiled once and for all...

AlertMe started life as a security company, offering their on-line wireless alarm system.  Now it's clear from the very front page of their website that they are focussing their future on Energy monitoring.  They've employed their Zigbee technology, already refined in their security product, to create their latest offering - AlertMe Energy - a £49 hardware package along with a subscription to a monitoring service.  So, does it live up to the promise and can you really save money using the system....?

Plex + Indigo + Harmony Remote = Home Automation Bliss      Why do it?  About a year ago, I decided to take the home automation plunge and sought out ways to automate my home's lighting, entertainment and HVAC systems.  After doing a good deal of research, I concluded that the most cost-effective and flexible solution would be to utilitze Perceptive Automationís Indigo software and Smarthome's Insteon modules for the lighting and HVAC. 

Once I installed all the Insteon devices (which also included a garage door opener), I installed the Indigo software on an iMac in my study, connected the iMac to the Insteon adapter which plugs into the wall and my home automation dreams were off and running...

Clipsal have recently unleashed the new CBUS Wiser unit which appears to offer a great deal of potential to home automaters with CBUS to expand their CBUS network with logic features and an out-of-the-box touchscreen centric control system.

In essence, the Wiser unit combines the functions of a couple of existing CBUS units that you may already own, and additionally adds functionality not previously available in a hardware based unit.  The Wiser performs the following functions on a CBUS network...

The UBL-MMR from Mk1 Studio is a 19 inch rackMount Shelf for your Mac mini server.  Automated Home reader Ben McCormack reviews the hardware and shows us more photos of his home automation rack project...