Home Automation Post 1

Home Automation has been a dream of mine for a while now but not having a good location to test it in has put the project on hold. The other issue was a cheap wireless connection between devices but with the esp8266 that has now partially been solved. I haven't received my modules yet and I wanted to start working on this so I am starting with a arduino uno with an Ethernet shield. I am looking at using MQTT as my way of sending information back and fourth between the esps and a raspberry pi as my server for both the website and all of the MQTT transactions. I have installed mosquito on the rpi as a broker. Time for the fun to begin.