To keep a track of various environmental parameters and use them for intelligent home control, sometime back I set off on this journey to setup a data logging system using Arduinos and open source M2M software using :-
- Arduinos – pretty much any model will do. At a minimum you need two, one for the base receiver and the other for the remote data capture / transmission unit.
- Mango M2M. I got a second hand laptop for Rs.3000/-, converted it into a linux server with Ubuntu Server 12.04 and installed Mango M2M on it.
- Sensors – humidity, temperature, pressure, ultrasound etc etc
Read on at http://fotohobbist.com/blog/arduino-mango-m2m-data-logging/.