The hard part doing this is not the programming side, it's the physical interface side, and doing it in a useful and cost effective manner.
I'd love to have whole house lighting control, but at $20/node, it's not going to happen. I'd love to have some sort of datalogging and computer control of my 6 thermostats and the wood stove. My research was showing something like $100/node for the thermostats, and less than that for the thermocouples for the stove, but then I'd need a datalogger for them. I'd love to have killawatt meters in all my sockets, with wireless reporting. Etc Etc Etc.
Their system is a usb->xbee, and then xbee->arduino on the other end. That's like $100 of control systems, and you still don't actually have interfaces to anything, you have a low power board that needs a driver to even drive a reasonable relay. (but, there are easy driver circuits for that, even $20 pigtails with embedded relays)
I'd love to have whole house lighting control, but at $20/node, it's not going to happen. I'd love to have some sort of datalogging and computer control of my 6 thermostats and the wood stove. My research was showing something like $100/node for the thermostats, and less than that for the thermocouples for the stove, but then I'd need a datalogger for them. I'd love to have killawatt meters in all my sockets, with wireless reporting. Etc Etc Etc.
Their system is a usb->xbee, and then xbee->arduino on the other end. That's like $100 of control systems, and you still don't actually have interfaces to anything, you have a low power board that needs a driver to even drive a reasonable relay. (but, there are easy driver circuits for that, even $20 pigtails with embedded relays)