Where do you keep your iPad?

Interesting, either your particular problem guests are just plain disrespectful or just not cognizant that what they are doing is an issue. I am willing to bet most of them are not doing it intentionally and the others, well you gotta ask why you would want them in your home in the first place. My wife and I both have iPads with iRule on them. We usually use our own to control what we need as we both use our iPads for many other things besides iRule we tend to have them always nearby and charged. Every once in a while you go to use it for iRule and have to have a darn I left it in the car in the garage moment but not to often. When we do have guests over we don't often let them have control lol I usually show them iRule and what it does but I control it, for Directv control with guests we have the original rf Directv remote available so once everything's turned on they can use that to channel surf. Our family members who come around know how to use iRule and are respectful enough to treat our iPads nicely. One other thing is I have an iPod touch with a simplistic "Lite" iRule interface on it that can be used for guests. I think your situation sounds like you might have guests more often and varied than my situation. I think the best thing for you to do would be to better educate your house guests. I think a polite "And this iPad is actually a touchscreen remote control for this room, let me show you how it works! Pretty cool huh? Your welcome to use it but please don't use it for anything but the remote, make sure it stays in this room and that the kids don't get to it as it could break easily." Any reasonably respectful person should receive something like that without offense I would think and should resolve your issues.

Man I feel for ya!

I don't know much about Roomie as I was an early iRule adopter. I love the flexibility iRule gives me but it does take some time to make a nice looking interface. The thing with iRule is the App is free and the builder account is what costs. What is good about this is your layout is not tied to any apple id as a matter of fact it is tied to a google account. What this means is that you can put the app on any iOS or android device at no cost and then sync the app to your builder account (google account.) So for instance iRule lets you have 3 or 5 "Handsets" depending on weather you have regular (50.00) or pro (100.00.) What a Handset is is not each device but rather a layout set so in my case I use two of my handsets one is for the ipads and our galaxy s3's as they both are the same resolution screens, the other is for the ipod touch. So on my wifes and I's iPads once the app is downloaded in the settings of the app on both devices I just put the Google account username and password and choose the main layout to sync. So theoretically you could load any one handsets layout onto an unlimited amount of devices.

If all you are using the iPad for is iRule, remember the new feature in iOS 6 called Guided Access. It lets you lock down the screen to one specific app protected by a pin code. That way, you cant leave the app without knowing the pin code.

More here: http://appadvice.com/appnn/2012/09/new-feature-in-ios-6-how-to-use-guided-access