Getting back into electronics - this time with Microcontrollers

I took a few e-books with me when we went on holiday to Rarotonga recently, and some of them were on home automation. This has rekindled my interest in electronics and left me with 2 main take-away's:

• Using microcontrollers such as are in the Arduino boards is much better than using discrete components. While there is still some electronic design involved, the function can be controlled by software and the device is better able to respond to external signals, both from sensors but also from other devices, computers or humans
• Home automation, or at least smart homes, is about making devices communicate with each other, and with having a control system driving the whole house. And the best way to do this is with radio, it is not practical to wire everything together.

So I'm on a new learning journey. I thought I would start with something relatively easy, so I am going to replace the LED dimmer controlling the LED's in the hall way. Not that there is anything really wrong with what I have, but it is a fairly simple project and now I can make the LED's TWINKLE.
One of my goals now is to improve the documentation around my projects, electronic and otherwise. The page for the new Twinkler is here.