I'm curious how much time / hardware hacking was necessary to implement your own thermostat or garage door controller. The garage door controller seems like the simpler of the two to reverse engineer, but a thermostat has a number of inputs to reverse engineer unless there is a documented/standard api of sorts.
Also, where are you sourcing cheap touch screens 'from the pile?'
Ah. I mis-understood you on the touch screen part. You made a web interface that you access via cheap tablets. I was thinking that you were replacing physical switches with wall-mounted mini touchscreens.
Yes. That's really where the magic comes from. We've had model controller and view smashed together poorly in single purpose devices for so long, it takes a bit of a mental reorientation to understand that a light switch even has a M, a V, and a C.
Once you do though, you get the awesomeness of programming together your lights, security system, and garage door opener into one view with a software "controller" that can open the door, report its state and turn on the lights with a button press. Then you can put that button on any wall, phone or whatever. If you want to create the functionality of merely replacing a switch with a little touch screen, you can, but that's just one instantiation of the many that become possible.
Also, where are you sourcing cheap touch screens 'from the pile?'