Self Twitting Home?

A computer engineer has connected his home to social networking service Twitter, enabling it to Tweet him with updates about his residence’s electricity and water consumption.

Andy Stanford-Clark, 43, has fitted wireless sensors onto household items scattered around his 16th Century thatched cottage on the Isle of Wight, according to various online reports.

The sensors feed information to a central hub that, with the help of some specially written software, translates into words a sensor notification that, say, the bathroom heater has been turned on.

[source]

This is the best use I have seen for the Twitter service yet. Most readers know I think Twetters to humans turns all into Twits. Nor do I mean that in a flattering manner. But as a machine based protocol for sending/receiving queries it rocks.

I already have several client’s servers that send me critical messages as to they had to switch over battery power, cooling etc. So the question would be how hard is it to develop an API that handles the Twitter-X10 interface? If that was in place one could possibly build a remote control interface to the home right from a Twit enabled handheld. Possibly a two message format. First message with the intended action. Second with the security code to add that activates it to the hub’s queue.

Twitter really needs to up the message limit to say 2048 characters.