Emergency Party Button

A nice weekend home automation project: the Emergency Party Button.

The Emergency Party Button turns an ordinary apartment into a full-blown disco, complete with laser, black lights and fog machine. The guts of the whole system is the X10 protocol, that is used to send a signal from the Big Red Button to a transceiver module, which in turn forwards it to computer. The computer then runs a script turning off lights, closing blinds, and turning on black lights, laser, strobe light, fog machine and music.

The whole project sets you back a little over $600, but you can probably get some of the items cheaper (the button, including hardware and X10 transmitter, cost the maker about $170). Unfortunately, the only thing I know about the maker is that his screen name is plasma2002.

Check out the video to see the end result:

(Via Lifehacker)