I am currently using Mango to run scheduled tasks and to control my home via the web. Mango is a great solution due to the fact that it is web based and can be accessed from anywhere in the world.
Everyday Mango is improving and I am proud to say I joined the "band wagon" early on! The support and assistance I have received from the Mango team has been excellent.
My Home Automated System or HAS is built based upon a Velleman k8061 board. This board is awesome and provides many digital and analog inputs and outputs. It can be purchased from qkits at this address: http://store.qkits.com/moreinfo.cfm/K8061 - I recommend paying extra for the company to assemble.
I have written software using VB which runs on the machine which the board is connected to (USB) as a service. The service takes values from the board and populates them to a MYSQL database. The database has basically two tables. One table is to set values on the board, the other receives values from the board.
From this point, Mango's database connection tool (SQL Data Source) is used to connect the board and Mango together.
I am working on documenting this process and will be available at http://www.matthewjbailey.com
If you can make your components store there values in a database, Mango can handle the rest.