It involves a lot of custom software that I will be describing in more detail in the future. Naturally there's also some open source code, like libfreenect and Linux+GNU.
You know what'd be awesome? (Just throwing it out here). If the lights smoothly ramp up and down instead of winking on and off. It'd be way more Star Trek and much more impressive looking to the uninitiated. (Although, if you're already using X10 or similar modules to control the lights, ridiculously easy to actually add.)
That's GNU/Linux to you, you great hacker you. Srsly, release this soon, 'been looking for some FOSS project to manage my home's billion and one power sources, timers, lights, doors, and unicorn stable.
Would love to see how you even begin/approach meddling with hardware via commands to this complete noob anything other than stupid shell and CRUD app scripting.
Well, bits and pieces have been and will be released as open source, but the core automation system will not (at least for now). Check out my GitHub and SourceForge pages linked from my personal web site (linked from my HN profile) for the parts that have been released. If you must have FOSS, LinuxMCE might work for you, otherwise I'll continue to post more information about my system in the future.
P.S. I said "Linux+GNU" instead of GNU/Linux because I think of and use them as separate, replaceable pieces. And thanks for the compliment ("great hacker", hah) :).
They redesigned the power supply to fix the issues with the SheevaPlug, and straight-up discontinued the GuruPlug Server Plus. I did have to replace one power supply on an older SheevaPlug that was in a location with a very high ambient temperature (well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit), but haven't had any other problems with either the old or new power supplies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SheevaPlug
I'd love to know more about all of the steps involved with hooking that up to a Kinect and getting it to process input and perform tasks.