SRS, I guess there a few ways you could go. The old standard is probably X10 which sends signals down the power line but Iv'e found it slow and have had reliability problems with it. The "poshest" might be z wave (look it up, guest posts here bounce with more than 2 links) which works on a mesh type network. Then are are things that use your home wireless network but the ones I've looked at seem very tied in to you using their proprietary systems and sending data to them...

My own current choice as I think said above somewhere is lightwaverf which works with our LED "conversion" and (UK wise, US might be different) works on the 433mhz bandwidth. I think they do have an android app and controller in their range.

For me though the main device is probably an rfxtrx433. It talks to a lot of 433mhz devices so you can sort of "mix and match" your devices. (eg.Garden temp sensors here are Oregon, power sensor is OWL, and innside theres still some X10 and homeeasy). There is off the shelf software open source and propriatary that can use it. My own dabblings in python that speaks to one borrows heavily from the free open source domotiga   - that is written in a version of BASIC but it's a pretty simple "translation" from what they have worked out into python.