I am currently working with a startup company developing controls for solar water heating system, commercial lighting/climate control/monitoring and finally monitoring for large conventional water heaters - exciting i know ;) -.
I'm writing a system to take the Solar Thermal (and other technologies) UK installation standards and automate a lot of it,
Bureaucracy as a Service ;).
Where in the world are you, I'm in the UK.
I am in the US, get in touch with, We could collaborate
maguirre at automatid com
I'm really unimaginative and can't picture what kind of hardware we are talking about? What kind of controllers/processors, what type of periphery etc.
Atmel AVR micros for the nodes and an ARM SBC to run Linux on as the border router for the controllers
As far as the peripherals are concerned temp sensors/light sensor/humidity sensor for monitoring.
For control mostly our own hardware Relay or PWM output to control/dim ballasts or LED fixtures etc