We've shared a lot of ways to automate the lights, doors, and furniture of your home, but DIY weblog Mad Science has one of the cheapest, simplest home automation projects yet: turn anything on or off from afar with an old cellphone and an Arduino.

All you need for this project is an old cellphone (with either Wi-Fi connectivity or a pay-as-you-go plan) and an Arduino (along with a few other assorted components for the Arduino). You'll need to know how to get up and running with an Arduino and someone else's code, of course, but the project is very simple: essentially, the Arduino has a light sensor attached that will detect when the cellphone lights up (like when it receives a phone call) and will perform an action in response, like turning on the lights. Throw the whole thing in a box, stick it in a corner, and you have a mini home automation project set up for anything you can think of. There are certainly more sophisticated ways to do something like this, but it's a great way to get started with projects in this realm, and it's very cheap if done right. Hit the link to check out the full how-to.

How to Trigger Anything from Anywhere with Just a Phone Call | Mad Science

Wouldn't it be awesome if you could just drop a PDF in a folder and it would automatically show up on your Kindle? Or if imported photos automatically scaled themselves down to a smaller size? Or if your PDF documents automatically signed themselves? These are just a couple of examples of what Wappwolf can do along with your Dropbox or Google Drive account. Here's how to make the magic happen.

How Wappwolf Works

Wappwolf works by connecting to your Dropbox or Google Drive account and watching folders of your choice for types of files that you specify. When it sees anything that matches the criteria you laid out, it then performs an action of your choice. For example, if a folder called "New Photos" that contains all the new photos imported into your Dropbox/Google Drive has new JPEG files added to it, Wappwolf can notice this and then scale them down, add text, and do a bunch of other things automatically. It'll then create a processed folder containing the new images, place it in your Dropbox/Google Drive, and contain all the processed JPEG images you want without any effort on your part. There are plenty of other things you can do with JPEGs and other types of files, which is what we'll be looking at in this post. First we'll get everything set up and create a sample action, then look at a few cool actions you might want to try out for yourself.

Creating Your First Action

Step One: Sign Up

Before we get started, you'll need to sign up for an account—which is pretty easy to do. You just visit wappwolf.com and sign in with your Dropbox or Google Drive account. If you're hesitant about allowing full access, you can grant Wappwolf single-folder permissions to keep it from seeing everything in your account. In the event you have any trouble signing up, just follow these instructions for Dropbox or Google Drive. Once you've got that out of the way, Wappwolf will create a sample automation for you that downsizes images and adds some text to them. Since we're going to be looking at a bunch of other options and creating automations ourselves, you can choose to delete this and then move on to the next step.

Step Two: Choose a Folder

When you have no active Wappwolf actions, signing in will take you directly to the Choose a Folder step. If you already have an action (which, presumably, you do not since you're new to this) you'll just need to click the "Create a new automation" button. This will present you with a list of all the folders in your Dropbox/Google Drive. You can select one, or click on its name to go inside of it and select one of its folders instead. Once you've selected the folder you want, click the radio button next to its name and click the "Next" button at the bottom of the page.

Step Three: Selection an Action (or Two)

After you've chosen a folder, Wappwolf will present you with a list of actions that are sorted by file type. Before you can choose an action you'll need to decide what type of file you're going to work with. Feel free to pick whatever you'd like, but if you'd like to follow along for practice let's set up a Document-based action. Let's convert any document dropped into this folder to a PDF. You can do this by clicking the radio button next to the "Convert it to PDF" option. When you do, a big list will appear of supported file formats so you know what you can and can't use. Most standard file formats from Word to Rich Text to HTML will work fine, but you won't be able to use documents created in less-widely used apps like Apple's Pages, for example. Make sure you take note of the supported formats before you start saving unsupported documents in this folder. They'll just be ignored. If this all looks good, go ahead and click the "Add Action" button underneath the supported file formats list.

If you're done, you can click the "finished?" button at the top of the screen or you can add another action. Now that this file is a PDF, perhaps you want to delete the original. You can add this option from the Advanced section at the bottom of the actions list. In the Any file section, you can choose several other useful options like encryption, uploading to another file sharing service like Box or Skydrive, adding the PDF to a Basecamp project, and much more. Feel free the play with any additional actions you want, but we're going to keep this first one pretty simple and just stick with the convert to PDF action.[associate

Step Four: Add a Document to Your Folder

Now that you've finished adding your action(s), Wappwolf will display the active action on your main account page. To test it out, go into the Dropbox/Google Drive folder you set up in the previous steps and add a supported file. That file will first need to sync up with Dropbox/Google Drive. Once it does, Wappwolf will see it within the next minute and start turning it into a PDF. You'll see a processed folder appear, and your original file will be moved into it. This might scare you at first because it seems like your original file was deleted, but it just moved. After the move takes place a PDF file will show up in the primary folder containing the contents of the original text file. This whole process won't happen instantly, but generally you can expect results to begin to appear after a few seconds.

My Five Favorite Wappwolf Actions

It's pretty easy to explore the many actions Wappwolf has available, but there are a couple you should definitely know about because they're especially useful. Here are my five favorites.

Convert an Audio File to a New Format

By far, my favorite automation on Wappwolf is audio conversion. While it isn't exactly difficult to convert an audio file every time you need to, it takes time to figure out the settings (or remove the old copy if you're converting within a music player like iTunes). It's much easier to just drop a file in a folder and let Wappwolf do the work for you. What's really great is that you can use any of the following formats: MP3, AIFF, FLAC, M4A, OGG, WAV, or WMA. You can let Wappwolf pick the settings for you, or you can click on an "Advanced Settings" link to set the bit rate, frequency, number of channels, and other settings. This action is really useful if you need to automatically convert a lossless file to one you can easily share online or batch convert a bunch of lossless audio files you have lying around to a lossy format for your MP3 player. Perhaps you just need to use this just one time to convert a ton of audio files to another format and you don't want to deal with it manually. With the audio conversion action, you can make this all happen automatically while you're away from the computer.

Send Files to Your Kindle

Although it's not hard to send files to your Kindle via email, and have Amazon automatically perform the conversion for you, Wappwolf makes it as simple as just dropping a file in a folder and waiting for it to show up on your device. All you have to do is enter the address you want to send the document from, the Kindle email address that will receive the file, if you want to send it over Wi-Fi only or pay the $0.15 to send it via 3G, and whether or not you want the file converted to Kindle format before it gets sent. You can send any format supported by Kindle, but if you want to send a format that Kindle doesn't support but Wappwolf does, you can use the Convert to PDF action (which we detailed earlier in this post) to ensure it will be in the proper format every time.

Upload Your Photos Everywhere

Chances are you don't use every photo sharing site on the web, but you do use more than one. For example, I post all my photos on Flickr but I like them to go to Facebook as well. With Wappwolf, you can create an automation with multiple actions that takes your photos and uploads them to services like Facebook, Flickr, and Picasa. You can even have Wappwolf downscale the images before posting and add text or a watermark. However you go about it, you can save yourself the time of uploading to multiple services by just configuring a folder to do it all for you.

Automatically Sign PDF Documents

Although it is perhaps the coolest of the actions—as you can actually just dump a PDF file in a folder and a signed copy will be returned to you in a few seconds—it's a tedious process to set up and you have to use another third-party service called Xyzmo. Getting started requires filling out a form and providing quite a bit of information to Xyzmo, so you may not want to set this up. Once you get through the long-ish setup process, however, you can have your documents signed for you. You also should note that this is an electronic signature and not a pasted handwritten signature, so that might be a deterrent as well. If you're cool with the drawbacks, however, this is definitely an action worth looking at.

Zip a File and FTP or Email It

Sometimes you need to deliver files to the same location or person on a regular basis, and that involves zipping them up and uploading them or sending them in an email. With these actions, you can automate the whole process by just dumping those files in a folder and letting Wappwolf deliver them to a destination of your choice. Assuming you want to zip the files first, just add a zip file action, and then choose the destination you want—whether it's and FTP server, someone's email address, or one of the other many destinations Wappwolf offers. Wappwolf will take care of it for you and you won't have to do anything at all. This can save a bunch of time at work or even when you need to email photos to your parents on a regular basis.

If you get started with Wappwolf and set up any cool actions, be sure to share them in the comments!

Ever wished your house would greet you when you opened the front door, which unlocked automatically when you approached? Or your kitchen kept an inventory of everything inside it? The Jetsons may seem like they've got it all, but with a little patience and the right DIYs, the Jetson'll have nothing on you.

The dream of the house of the future relies on automated systems that ensure you'll never have to get up to do anything or remember to turn anything off. You can pay someone to install a fully integrated system in your home for a few thousand dollars, or you can piece together the elements you want and build your own version of the house of the future. We'll break down some of the more interesting (and ridiculous) ideas room by room that you can implement on your own. Let's get started with the entryway.

Wire Your Entryway to Greet You in Style

You home's entryway is the first thing you see after a long day at work. If you're looking for a little pick me up to enhance your routine, here's a couple clever ways to make your comings (and goings) a more enjoyable experience.

Add Theme Music to Your Arrival

When you come home you want a greeting to remind you that you're truly the king (or queen) of the house. What better way to do that than a custom introduction? DIY blog Dynamic boost "You're the Best Around"). If you don't want your own theme music you can also record a custom greeting.

Parts needed: Arduino ($29.95), MP3 Player Shield ($39.95), ProtoScrewShield ($14.95).

Difficulty: Moderate, requires some knowledge of Arduino.

Make an RFID Door Lock and Ditch Your Keys

One of the trademark scenes in any science fiction film is the door automatically unlocking for the person who has keys. Sure, on most occasions unlocking your own door isn't hard, but with a handful of groceries it's a difficult task. You can piece together your own RFID lock that unlocks with a wireless key and locks itself automatically. It's not the most exciting thing you can do to your door, but it's probably one of the handiest.

Parts needed: It's a long list but totals under $100.

Difficulty: Moderate, but the video shows you everything you need to do.

Augment Your Living Room with Automatically Delivered Entertainment and More

Your living room is likely your central entertainment hub and if you want to rig it up with futuristic-style, it's not hard to do. Not only can you automate your media delivery and accent it with a wide variety of control types, you can even add an instant party button.

Set Up a Fully Automated Media Center

The days of heading off to the video store to physically pick up and bring back a movie are long gone, but unless you can survive entirely on streaming video you need to set up a system to automate your downloads. That means using your computer as a media center.

We've shown you how to set up a fully automated media center before and also shown you how to turn that same idea into a torrent seeding machine. This automates your downloads and places them in the correct folders on your computer so you can share them over Wi-Fi with your television or set up a media computer next to your television. The benefit is that once they're set up all of your media is downloaded and delivered automatically to your computer. If you want to add an additional futuristic element, you can throw in voice commands for a true Star Trek flavor.

Parts needed: Computer, a bunch of free software.

Difficulty: Easy. It takes some time to set it up, but once it's done you don't have to touch it again. Photo by amirmeiri.

Start a Party with the Push of a Button

If cheesy '70s science fiction movies have taught us anything, it's that every room should have a party button. With just a tap of said button, a room is converted into a playground of awesome flashing lights and killer music. One such party button is shown off on the website Plasma2002 and it dims the lights, starts playing music, turns on blacklights, and closes the blinds at the push of a button. Overkill? Probably, but no future-house should be without a party button, even if this one costs a lot to build.

Parts needed: Too many to list totalling $634.

Difficulty: High, but probably worth it.

Hack Your Kitchen to Track Inventory and Hide Shelves

Unfortunately, we haven't reached the point where we can simply ask the kitchen to make dinner (yet), but that doesn't mean you can't trick out your cooking area with a few futuristic ideas.

Create an Inventory and Database for Your Food Items

Since you can't feasibly create a robot to cook for you, the next best thing is a computer that can track your food inventory, work as a kitchen timer, and do everything else a computer can do. If you have an old PC laying around gathering dust you can convert that into a fully functioning kitchen computer complete with a kitchen database. Hacker Ryan of the blog Studio Lights created the iKitchen with a handy iPhone-like interface that can track a kitchen database with a barcode scanner, manage to-do lists, recipes, and plenty more. Of course, if you have an iPad, you can also rig up a cabinet mount like this in your kitchen and get the same effect.

Parts needed: Old PC capable of running Windows XP, Touch Screen LCD ($350, but you can usually find older models for way cheaper), OPOS Barcode Scanner ($90+ but you can find them cheap used as well).

Difficulty: Moderate, the cabinet installation is is the toughest part.

Add an Automated Pop Up Shelf to a Kitchen Island

One of the key features in most homes of the future is the idea that you can stuff storage into tiny places and access the storage with the push of a button. This means creating hidden systems like the fruit rack in Back to the Future so you can make better use of a small space.

This automated pop-up kitchen rack is one pretty simple and easy way to tuck away your appliances or shelves. With a push of a button, the shelf raises and you have access to anything you want. This example has a spice rack, but you could feasibly expand the idea to anything you'd like in your kitchen (or anywhere else in your home), including a coffee maker, wine rack, or even a microwave.

Parts needed: Linear actuator ($129.99), tools to cut into your counter top.

Difficulty: Easy. The installation of the lift (the actuator) is dead simple. The most difficult part is cutting the kitchen counters down.

Set Up Your Bathroom to Monitor Your Water Usage and Guide You to the Toilet in the Dark

You probably don't spend a lot of time in the bathroom on most days, but that doesn't mean you can't install a few simple hacks to make things a bit easier.

Track Your Shower Time and Water Usage

If you're a little groggy in the morning it's easy to accidentally spend a lot of time in the shower waiting to wake up. If your water bill is always high because of this then tracking your usage is the most logical step. DIY blogger Mike Newell decided to create a system to track his shower time and toilet flushes so he can better estimate his water usage. The system works by using an Arduino and a motion sensor to track how long you stand in the shower. It also tracks the number of flushes on the toilet. It's a remarkably simple tool that can not only help you cut down on your water usage, but also help you see how much time you spend in the shower.

Parts needed: Arduino ($29.95), IR Sensor ($2.95), ultrasonic range finder ($25.95).

Difficulty: Moderate. If you're familiar with Arduino it's relatively simple.

A Very Simple Pee-Light to Guide You to the Toilet

Sometimes the key to home automation is not only usefulness, but also simplicity. Case in point, this pee-light that detects motion and triggers a very dim light when you need to run to the bathroom in the middle of the night. The nice thing about this hack is that it doesn't turn on the overhead light and blind you.

Tools needed: PIR Movement Sensor ($9.95), Texas Instruments MSP430 USB Stick ($20), 12v LED Light ($9.99).

Difficulty: Easy if you have a basic understanding of electronics.

Rig Up the Whole House for Automated Lights, Utility Monitoring, and Security

Room by room solutions are great, but if you want to really build yourself the house of the future you're going to need to go for a full-blown home automation setup. The basic elements of a off-the-shelf home automation system are pretty simple: remote light control, power usage monitoring, and home security. Let's take a look how you can build these systems on your own for a fraction of the cost.

Control Your Lights and Outlets with Your Phone

The central purpose of most commercial home automation systems is power control. While those systems require a technician to install and set everything up, Instructables user mrx23dot shows you how to do it with a cheap router. With this setup you can control your lights remotely from your computer or smartphone.

This system uses commercially available power outlets that can run your lights or electronics through a network. The network is created with a cheap OpenWRT like one of these and creates a webapp for controlling any of your electronics from anywhere. It's especially handy if you're renting an apartment or your simply don't want to cut into the electrical system in your walls.

Parts needed: Open WRT router ($20-$40, see list of compatible routers above), Arduino ($29.95), Wireless Remote Controls (3-pack $21).

Difficulty: Hard, but the Instructables guides you through the process pretty slowly.

Monitor Your Utility Usage

As we've seen before, monitoring your power usage is a great way to cut the bills, but it's also incredibly expensive. The cheapest way to monitor your power is to create a system that watches for a blinking light on your power meter, but if you want to actually use that data, you have to send it somewhere. Blogger Antibore's solution integrates that data into a cheap digital photo frame using a custom network setup. The small receiver attached to power meter outside sends data to a server and then displays the current power usage on a small monitor. It's a handy way to track all your power consumption without totally breaking the bank.

Parts needed: Samsung Photo Frame ($65 used), Beagleboard ($89), Xbee to wireless send data ($22.95), ATtiny 2313 ($2.88).

Difficulty: High, but at around 1/5th of the cost of most commercial monitors it's not a bad time investment. You can always skip the digital display and just use the simple monitor tool to track on your computer.

Set Up Your Own Security and Monitoring System

The final essential part in a home automation system is security. The benefit you get from going through commercial service is that the system is installed by someone else, but hacking together your own system is dead simple.

The easiest way to do it is to set up a motion detection camera on your home computer. We've broken down our two favorite options before and both are easy to set up and will notify you on your phone if anything moves in the house. If you're looking for a solution that tracks multiple cameras, Vitamin D allows for several wireless cameras so you can monitor multiple areas of the house at once.

Parts needed: Computer with a webcam, software ($5, $50, or $60 depending on what you need).

Difficulty: Easy. A couple clicks and you're done.

The house of the future isn't going to build itself and with the above hacks you'll be well on your way to a Jetsons style fully automated home minus the robotic maid. You can always pick and choose which elements you'd like, but most of the above projects are accomplished in an afternoon at the most. The above ideas are just a handful of some of our favorites that are out there. Have you made any amazing upgrades to your home to make it more futuristic? Share your ideas in the comments.

OS X: Dropzone is a neat little app that seems like a basic file sharing utility, but when you look further you'll find it actually provides fantastic shortcuts for moving, copying, and uploading files, perform various tasks, and use information. Everything is handled via drag-and-drop, saving you time with common, tedious tasks.

Before we get into Dropzone, you should know we're not talking about free software. Dropzone will cost you $14. The software we like to feature is generally free or close to it, but Dropzone turned out to be so much more capable than initially expected that it was worth an in-depth look. With that said, let's take a look at what it can do.

Be sure to watch the video above for an in-depth look at Dropzone and it's many capabilities. For additional information, read on.

How Dropzone Works

Dropzone lives up in your Mac's menubar, allowing you to drag files, text, or whatever onto its icon and then a specific action you want to use. You can also specify five actions to show up as circles on the side of your screen. These actions, wherever you choose to keep them, allow you to perform helpful actions with nothing more than a drag and a drop. Dropzone comes with a bunch of useful built-in actions that mostly focus on file uploading, but there is so much more it can do. Below are some of my favorite built-in and downloadable actions that are available to use freely with the app.

Upload to FTP (Built-in)

Uploading to an FTP server allows you to use any online storage you have, such as underused web hosting space, to store files. If you configure the FTP Upload Dropzone you can simply drag a file onto it, watch it upload, and get a URL in your clipboard when you're done. Additionally, if you hold down the option key when dragging multiple files onto the action then Dropzone will zip them all up, upload the zip, and provide you with that URL. To get it to work you just have to enter your FTP server's information, tell it where you want the files to be uploaded, and click the Add button.

Upload to Flickr (Built-in)

Uploading your images to an image sharing service is not always the quickest process. Flickr's desktop uploader can take a bit of time to process each image as you add it and the web uploader requires logging in, finding your photos, specifying information after they've finished uploading, and a few other tedious tasks. If you use the Flickr Upload Dropzone, however, you can just grab a bunch of photos, drag them on to the action, and let them upload. It's a super-fast way to share your photos.

Install Application (Built-in)

Install Application is a very clever action. When you download an app in a .dmg disk image file, it takes a few clicks to mount it, install the app, and eject the disk image. Instead, just drag it to the action and everything will be taken care of for you. You can even have Dropzone trash the .dmg file upon completion.

Zip & Email (Built-in)

Need to send a file or two via email? The Zip & Email Dropzone takes care of the process for you. Just drag a few files onto it and it'll zip them up, then compose a new message in Apple Mail. The downside, of course, is that this action only seems to work with Apple Mail. It would be nice if it worked with other email clients, like the fantastic Sparrow, or at least whatever you have set to be the default. Nonetheless, if you're an Apple Mail user this action is pretty great.

Print

Need to print a few files? The Print Dropzone will take care of that for you. Just drag any files you want to print onto it and they'll print right out. If you have multiple printers, you'll be prompted to select a printer first. Very simple and saves you time.

Download Print

Set Desktop Picture

Sure, you can right-click any image in the Finder and set it as your desktop image but what if you've got an image somewhere else? The Set Desktop Picture Dropzone will let you drag an image from most sources, such as your web browser, and update your wallpaper as instructed. You can even hold down the command key to choose which desktop you want to set if you have multiple monitors.

Download Set Desktop Picture

Send to iPhone

If you've got an iPhone, you've likely struggled with moving data from your Mac to it and back again. That's what myPhoneDesktop, a simple data transfer app, can help you do. The Send to iPhone Dropzone makes the transfer of information faster by just letting you drag and drop want you want to send and let the myPhoneDesktop app handle the rest.

Download Send to iPhone

Say Text

If you're not in the mood to read or want your computer to speak text for any reason, just drag that text onto the Say Text Dropzone. It'll speak the text for you automatically, saving you the trouble of copying it into an app like Text Edit and trying to remember where the speech options are.

Download Say Text

For more downloadable actions, check out the full list here.

Extend Dropzone Further by Creating Your Own Actions

Dropzone is highly extensible thanks to a simple Ruby-based API. You only need to know basic Ruby (which you can learn here) to create something simple. Dropzone also offers excellent API documentation to walk you through the process. This way you can create quick, new shortcuts to make Dropzone do whatever you want it to do. If the above list of actions doesn't cut, you'll always have a DIY option to change that.

Dropzone 2 ($14) | Aptonic Software