Using Twitter for Home Automation

Gordon Meyer has an interesting blog post on how he’s using Twitter.com to pass his Home Automation notifications to his various locations via the web, email and text messages.

[googlead]”I’ve been experimenting with using Twitter for automated notifications, and so far I really like the advantages it provides over other techniques. First, Twitter supports several methods of delivering messages (which are called “tweets” in Twitter-speak). A tweet can be received via SMS to your cell phone, via several instant messaging services, by visiting a web page, or by using specialized apps such as the terrific Twitteriffic… The best thing about this flexibility is that the recipient chooses how they want to receive their tweets, and changing this setting is easily done “on the fly.”

The sender of the message doesn’t need to know which delivery mechanism is currently active, it’s all handled by Twitter. This simplicity is a boon for home notifications which typically either take a shotgun approach and send notifications to several places at once (home, office, and cell phone email), or try to guess (based on time of day or other data) what the best destination might be. Letting the recipient determine where they want to receive messages, at any given moment, makes delivery much simpler and more reliable.

Finally, Twitter has a simple HTTP-based interface for sending messages. Instead of having to script an email program, or an SMS utility, sending a tweet is as easy as having your home automation system open a URL.”
Source: oreilly.com  Related: My Robot