[crazypyro]

I will say that I think Leap motion[0] is another really well made "controller" that would be great for smart homes. It just "works" with their code out of the box. You can easily tell how many fingers someone has, whether they are tapping, grabbing, a couple other gestures, their 3 dim location relative to the camera, etc. I used one at a hackathon a few months back to attempt a Theremin and it was quite fun.

[0]https://www.leapmotion.com/

[prawn]

Interesting idea applying that to homes. Instead of the device watching/scanning out from a monitor to a keyboard surface, it could be a panel on a wall in your kitchen that recognises gestures performed nearby (like in the cubic foot in front of it).

I could imagine that learning gestures to control doors, blinds, background music, lighting and wake/sleep procedures like locking all doors, fading lights, putting devices on standby, etc.