Recently I stumbled upon a blog entry by Marc Fleury, whom I believe is one of the lead developers on the JBoss Application Server project. In this post he describes his new pet project, OpenRemote, which has of late bloomed into a full blown affair.

There’s an official website and the project seems to be buzzing with activity. From what I understood, the goal of OpenRemote is to build an open-source universal remote control for your home, including all home automation protocols known to man: X10, KNX/EIB, Lon, etc. They are talking about a reference implementation, apparently targeting the iPhone.

I think a major challenge that’s these guys will face is how to make a truly usable UI for home automation. I’ve quoted Donald Norman before and given his opinions on this thorny issue. But I truly hope the OpenRemote people will eventually solve this problem.