Submission by James Clabon - Out of the box the ZWave ZIR010 PIR Motion Sensor seem to be well manufactured. They have a quality feel about them. Compared to X10's MS13's they are slightly larger in all dimensions.

I guess looks are down to personal taste but I think these look cool. They look modern and seem to blend into their surroundings thanks to their rounded edges. Also no logo on the front and no aerial sticking out makes them more attractive than the X10 counterpart...

Submission by Balraj Jassal - If you're not familiar with X10 technology, you must have been living on planet Ga-Ga or have just discovered this website. For over a decade, X10 has reigned as the king of the Home Automation entry-level market. In its basic form X10 allows you to assign a unique 'address' to a home appliance allowing it to be switched on or off using a controller such as a remote control. Although many other Home Automation protocols and devices exist, X10 has been a success due to its comparatively low price and its ability to harness your home's existing electrical wiring. And the market continues to grow - with a rich range of modules, a growing base of software controllers and now what is titled as the 2nd generation of modules...

Submission by Mark Harrison - As all readers of Automated Home know, there is no substitute for the flexibility of CAT5 cabling. (See the wiring guide). However, as all homeowners know, there are some places that are hard to reach.

Wireless is the obvious alternative, but not perfect. Wireless tends to work well for connections where either latency isn't an issue, or buffering helps - moving large files between computers is a classic example of the first, and MP3 replay the second - provided you have a 5 second music buffer on your network MP3 player, it doesn't matter if the connection drops for a second and a half! Where wireless tends to run into trouble is with voice telephony - cutting out, even for a couple of seconds, midway through a phone call is more than annoying - it's enough to make the phone unusable...

The SmartHome Show 2006 took place in the NEC in Birmigham over the 2nd to the 5th of March. AV was once again a large component of the exhibition and the ubiquitous flat screen LCD's and Plasmas seemed to be on every stand. However there was also plenty of lighting control, home networking, whole house audio and cctv/security too...

Submission by Keith Finnett -  Let's get straight to the point - does Microsoft Windows work as an entertainment centre? If you read the computing press you'll know the answer is yes, no, and maybe. If you want one, you'll have to be an early adopter with deep pockets - most pre-built systems retail at around the £1,000 mark. There are some great looking systems out there (Elonex's range look very tempting), but few of them would look good in my living room - and certainly not at that price...

One of the most popular projects that readers of Automated Home embark upon, is moving all of their media files (music, video, photos etc) onto a central server. Many of us have ripped our entire CD collections to MP3s on our hard drives over the last few years and, if you're like me, also taken the time to ensure they are tagged correctly and complete with album art.

Of course there have been a myriad of portable MP3 players that have enabled us to carry a selection of our tunes around with us. However, a similar product to allow us to access to an entire collection in the home environment has been a much rarer beast. Even though its five years since we reviewed our first domestic, networked mp3 player (the Dell Digital Audio Receiver) new devices of note have been relatively thin on the ground. The DDAR was a good first generation player and there have been a few other devices of note like the SliMP3 range, but nothing to really come close to the usability or design pinnacle of the ubiquitous Apple portable products. Until this year...

Submission by Nick Shore - Eh whats that, yet another programmable remote control, and for under £50, (see the link at the bottom) but is it any good ?

First impressions
The shape is familiar to any Tivo user, this remote is bigger than the silver peanut, but is still useable in one hand, nicely weighted with contours underneath it just feels right. Hit the glow button or any other keys and the screen and keys light up electric blue...emote arrived, and I had a basic setup up and running within 20 minutes of unpacking it, including upgrading it to the latest firmware...

Submission by Keith Finnett - It's not often you can buy something that's well built, ergonomic and a great gadget for under £50 - but Microsoft have produced a piece of hardware that would be a steal at twice the price.

As a fully paid-up Windows Media Centre household we have become absolutely reliant on the PC that sits upstairs to provide our whole-house entertainment. Microsoft's latest version of Windows Media Centre (version 2005) gives us access to live and recorded TV, music and (camcorder) video, DVDs, our ever growing photo gallery, and most recently digital radio which mysteriously appeared with the installation of Rollup 2 even though my tuner cards (both from BlackGold) did not provide support for this...