Home automation is one of things I would love to play with, but being a renter I am reluctant to wire up the flat only to have to rip it out, and besides it would give my flatties too many chances to play tricks on me lol.

But I stumbled across a cool looking UI today, done in Flash (maybe flex) which controls various aspects of the home automation. 

MavroMatic has some scrrenshots and now a forum about home automation and Flash. I will read more into this later, but maybe its time to have a play