Contestants, start your engines

Here's a head-start on a massive competition — think £20,000 in prizes — for all those IT pros whose pursuit of tech doesn't end when the working day does.

We know that many of you, when you get home and close the front door behind you, roll up your sleeves and get stuck into a project — not because you're paid to, but because you love to do it. It could be anything from setting up a rack server in the garage to designing a home automation system with a web interface. Or perhaps you've set up a distributed media system — not so much a home theatre as a home multiplex.

In the next couple of weeks, ZDNet.co.uk will launch a competition to find the most impressive home tech project. Once you've entered, you'll be able to post extra info, pics and video to a group blog — and the more you post, the more the judges will have to go on.

It doesn't matter whether it's a project you've been working on for a while, or something you cook up especially for this contest. And as long as it involves tech, we want to see it. However, the competition is only open to members, so if you haven't got an account yet, go here to sign up — it only takes a couple of minutes.

This is your chance to get started before the launch. We can't give full details of the prize yet, but it is worth £20,000, and there's a heavy hint in the headline here. Watch this space for more to come.