choosing a standard

[Flemming Richter Mikkelsen]

Hi list.

I want to write an application for the Freerunner to control stuff in my house.
This includes TV, light and other stuff.

For the TV, I want a smart remote, that remembers which channels I
usually watch on a given time and weekday. It should sort the channels
so that my favorite program appears first. This is not something I
will implement, but I want to make a lib. for communication with TV,
lights, etc. The systems could be accessed through wlan, bluetooth,
etc.

All these peripherals should communicate using the same standard
protocol. My problem is to choose a good one. It must support:
  - auto registration of devices (each device has a default ID and a
device_type_id,
    it will be discovered on broadcast and assigned an unique ID, much like DMLS
    (http://www.dmls.com))
  - knowing what kind of device it is (device_type_id)
    (ligh (on/off or dimming, etc), TV (selecting channels, etc), etc)
  - ask the devices for status report
  - send control message to the devices

My plan is to connect the divices to a micro controller, a multiplexer
and then to a linksys wireless router (flashed) over rs232 or usb. A
normal computer could of course also be used.

I am not sure exactly how or when to do this, but it would be cool. Any ideas?
The most important thing is that it is an open standard with low overhead.

-- Flemming