I don't think original parent did away with the hardware components.
X10, Insteon etc also sell software to manage their devices. That is not cheap. That s/w is probably what he replaced.
I did a small bit of home automation myself. I went with X10 (for low cost). I strongly suggest you do that too.
I set up an intrusion alarm system. I have multiple wireless (RF) door open and motion-detection sensors. I use a RF-to-USB X10 device to receive these signals on my Linux desktop.
My shell/Tcl scripts interpret this data and send email and (SMS via AT&T's email-to-sms gateway) if the alarm is triggered. They also turn on many lights and play an audio warning message, and turn on a webcam and start streaming the video to a remote server. :)
Since my house wiring is ancient, Insteon won't work in my house. For the same reason, ground-level sockets can be controlled by a plugged-in X10 controller, but not wall switches.
X10, Insteon etc also sell software to manage their devices. That is not cheap. That s/w is probably what he replaced.
I did a small bit of home automation myself. I went with X10 (for low cost). I strongly suggest you do that too.
I set up an intrusion alarm system. I have multiple wireless (RF) door open and motion-detection sensors. I use a RF-to-USB X10 device to receive these signals on my Linux desktop.
My shell/Tcl scripts interpret this data and send email and (SMS via AT&T's email-to-sms gateway) if the alarm is triggered. They also turn on many lights and play an audio warning message, and turn on a webcam and start streaming the video to a remote server. :)
Since my house wiring is ancient, Insteon won't work in my house. For the same reason, ground-level sockets can be controlled by a plugged-in X10 controller, but not wall switches.