Easy to install, set-up, use and understand.

Two-way Speech Capability - featuring a fully automatic intelligent prioritised speech buffer system, each speech item can now be spoken in a different voice and / or at a different pitch, speed or volume (personality, mood or emphasis) from sentence to sentence as required. Now also supports friendly Speech Agents (or characters) as well as standard TTS voices.

Can be operated via one or more (simple / sophisticated) interactive (transparency adjustable) screen overlay scenes via a mouse or touch screen, so as to be easily understood & controlled by any member of the family; or stay with our new improved GUI (HAL9000 style) where different information (or data streams) are easily mapped to different display areas.

Events are easily established, using a point & click, tabbed card index type interface. No programming or script writing required.

Windows Script Host is supported for advanced users wishing to plug-in their own VBScript & JScript routines to provide additional or specialist functionality, complex if-then-else scenarios, etc.

Events can be fired manually with a mouse click, by submitting plain language requests to the program’s natural language interface using the keyboard, by voice commands, via an interactive screen overlay scene, via the internet or home network and or by APRS radio messages from afar. Events can also be fired automatically by time / date, Sun rise/set times, other events, file data, digital I/O, serial com port or TCP/IP socket data or by the status of a power line module.

The firing of any particular events can be restricted by the time of day, day-of-week, only at weekends, etc.

A fired event can execute another program or batch file concurrently, execute a VB or Jscript; change, increment / decrement or shift a value of an I/O port (to control external equipment), send data to a serial or networked device, append data to a file (to control other programs), change a user variable (causing other events to fire or deactivate). It can also report a change in its status by calling a verbose message and or by automatically refreshing text and or graphics within an overlay scene in real time.

Each verbose message maybe displayed to the screen, logged to a file, spoken, emailed with SMTP authentication (can be relayed as an SMS to a mobile telephone), and or relayed over the amateur radio APRS network, in addition to playing an audio wave file, alerting you to the message.

All the verbose messages are user-definable to suit individual requirements, or maybe sequentially or randomly obtained from a text file, to exhibiting a less mechanical, and a more interactive behaviour.

A verbose message maybe prefixed or appended with data extracted from a serial port or socket stream, or the data being presented at an I/O port, to create different sensor logs (to log temperature, etc.)

Intrinsic two-way support for both X10 & UPB (Universal Power Bus) power line modules, providing an easy, effective and inexpensive solution to controlling your mains-powered lighting & appliances by computer, via the existing house wiring with a minimum of fuss.

The program can use up to 8 (RS-232) serial com ports and up to 26 TCP/IP network ports concurrently to directly monitor and control a wide variety of peripherals, devices and instruments, allowing you to bring together equipment from many different manufactures without requiring expensive controllers or plug-ins. Including most RS-232 devices, unique serial devices within an RS-485 master / slave multi-drop daisy chain serial network, and networked Ethernet peripherals.

By rapidly parsing received data, whether transmitted in response to a request, or sent as a continuous / intermittent data flow in either ASCII or binary, the program is able to capture all sorts of data from a wide variety of peripherals, devices & instruments connected via RS-232 / RS-485 or Ethernet and by extracting the very latest values the program can essentially respond or react in real time, making it ideal for data acquisition, automatic control, an alert warning system and data logging.

Integrated terminal emulators allowing several different data streams to be monitored simultaneously, in ASCII, Hex or both, facilitating interfacing and testing of a serial or networked device, on-the-fly!

Can be fully and securely remotely accessed via the Internet, Telnet and a home network or by an APRS equipped amateur radio.

RSS Weather Feed - Keep up to date with the very latest weather conditions & forecast for your area. The program can now automatically download Yahoo’s (The Weather Channel) RSS weather feed at regular intervals, interpret & display this information, in either metric or imperial units. Specific data can also be automatically extracted and mapped to the user variables, so as to be available to the events and or the virtual weather station graphical display.

Virtual Weather Station Graphical Display - See your current weather conditions at a glance with the new Virtual Weather Station graphical display, updated in real time, including self-adjusting inside & outside temperature bar graphs (Fahrenheit / Celsius), Wind Speed & Direction (on a compass rose) and atmospheric pressure trend (on a bar graph with adjustable update interval). This data can be supplied by a virtual weather station peripheral or for free via the RSS weather feed, or even a bit of both! Events can also be established to alert you to high wind speeds, etc.

RSS News Feeds (Talking News Aggregator) - Stay up to date with the very latest World, National, Business or Technology News, Entertainment or Gossip by automatically downloading up to 5 different RSS news feeds. Each news feed may be displayed and or spoken.

All the events have duration, repeat & (random) off-set timers.

Can be protected from radio incursions by a time related algorithm.

Intelligent Auto Mute, permitting crucial safety or security messages to be spoken aloud while other non-vital messages are muted.

Sun Rise / Sun Set time aware (selectable co-ordinate data for more than 3,900 cities around the world, or enter manually), automatically adjusting for Daylight Saving Time (flexible rules).

Wildcard Search Capabilities, allowing similar or related items to be easily located.

Familiar look & feel, with point and click ease of use.

Very extensive, easy going, hyper-text help system with examples & resources.