There's nothing more irritating than having to go out in the rain or cold just to check your snail mailbox, only to find there's nothing there. Argh! Why not wire up your house to tell you when the mail has arrived instead? Household Informer can do more than let you know when you have mail: this hack is based around an AVR chip and has particular sensors for each function you want it to perform(you can set it up to open your garage door, for example). See the for info on how to set up the useful system.

Forget to fill up the cat's water bowl and wish Kitty could fill his own bowl? Although the latter may not happen for some time, this hack not only fills up the cat's bowl automatically, but also tracks the cat's water usage, so no wasting water. The hacked device is attached to a water tap, and controlled by a sensor and data logging on Linux via and . The tap will sense when it is being used, and communicates with the PC, which then determines if it was the cat waiting for water or a human (a false positive on the data). This will then produce the right amount of water, when the cat wants it (well, most of the time, anyway). Follow to work it out for yourself, but be patient--it may take a while to complete.