Try to sell the idea of most home automation projects to people and you’ll likely meet with a little confusion and a lot of scepticism. Yes, turning the lights on in the bedroom when you’re in the hall is cool, but it isn’t exactly useful. However, what if you were to tell someone they could control their heating remotely, so that rather than warming an empty house while you slave away at overtime you could quickly turn it on just as you leave the office.

That’s the promise of the SmartHome Text heating control.  A £700 ($1,379) box that hooks up to your existing central heating programmer, it has a built-in GSM phone with a pay-as-you-go Vodafone SIM that will keep up to eight different handsets alerted as to the status of the heating and, in return, switch the system on and off from anywhere you have access to a phone line.

Two auxiliary inputs means you can hook up sensors attached, say, to monitoring equipment that tracks how full your oil tank is, or maybe even a thermometer checking just how hot the house is, and sends you SMS alerts should they change beyond preset conditions.  Override buttons on the control panel let you manually toggle the heating on and off.

SmartHome Text [via Automated Home ]