SoylentNews

"Every day, we come up with a new thing we want to automate," explains HeatSync Labs board member Luis Montes. The trouble is that each little gadget makes life more complicated for the lab. In addition to writing new code and piecing together new hardware for each gadget, hackers must setup and maintain the servers that keep the gadgets running. If they create enough them, these automated tools become more of a hassle than a convenience.
That's why Montes wants to move all of them under the control of a single open source system created by one of the hackers who hangs out at HeatSync. The system is called SkyNet. "Yes," says the tool's creator, Chris Matthieu. "I'm trying to build SkyNet from The Terminator."
If you can connect a device or application to the internet, you can connect it to SkyNet. The first time a device connects, your SkyNet server assigns the device a unique token it can use to authenticate itself on the network at any time. The server then updates its searchable directory of connected things, and you're ready to start sending messages to and from the device. This SkyNet is one more step toward what is now called The Internet of Things.
There are other tools out that let you manage home automation systems, such as the Revolv hub or IFTTT. But since SkyNet is open source, it provides more control over your data, and you have more freedom to shape it according to your needs.
There's only one thing to worry about, Matthieu says. "We just can't let it become self-aware."