Monitoring your HOUSE!!!

[kolik]

hi everybody!!
I am not good at guessing or designing, I am just a starter to all this.And I already did one very simple project, and now I want to do something more implemented and complex (for me).And I really need your help.
I want to control my equipment at home or whatever, by monitoring it through the PC. But i don't want it to be having a lot's of wires in it. The one that I did before contained two wires per each device, one is for sending signal to control that equipment(for example Lamp)., and the other wire is to detect in what status it is,on or off. But it is too complicated to do it , when it comes to control a bunch of devices. I managed these devices via PIC, where each two pins is used for one device to be controlled.

So the thing that I want to do now, is to find the way how to control that "LAMP" with only one pin from PIC. Should it be radio wave , or wireless,or somthing like Unique address, i don't realy have ideas. THat's why i am asking you. THese are my first projects,If you have some usefull info, please, . I am really eager to learn all this.
Sorry for my english

 

[(*steve*)]

It's not a trivial task.

You could use "1 wire" sensors -- these allow a number of devices to be connected to a 1 wire bus (it ends up being 2 or three wires).

Another option is to use a wireless link.

Any option will require quite a bit of electronics or micro controllers and quite a bit of programming.

Steve