[mnutt]

This seems like a really great use for raspberry pi. I recently finished a project involving a pi + a relay to activate a door buzzer, written in javascript. It was surprisingly simple and straightforward.

Besides turning on lights, the cool thing about relays is that most things involving physical push-buttons can be taken apart and easily wired up to a relay.

[stephengillie]

Arduinos can (supposedly) host webpages, and pins can be powered or depowered by (properly parsed) HTML POST commands. Combining this with a relay means we can create WIFI website interfaces for anything that uses electricity.

The opportunities to improve current products are so endless that I become overwhelmed whenever I think about this. We all have the parts to do this today, but so few are assembling them.

---

Want to set an outlet to turn on or off at different times? No need to buy a timer, just goto that outlet's website on your WIFI LAN, and set it on a timer. Or you could depower the outlet to make it child-safe.

Are you going on a trip and you're afraid you left the toaster plugged in and your house might burn down? Just VPN to your home LAN, sign into your kitchen's website and have it power off all outlets.

Locked out of your car? Pull out your phone, securely sign into your car's website, and tell it to unlock the doors.

Power and depower garage door openers, sprinklers, RC cars, even industrial equipment from a simple web interface.

[noonespecial]

Couldn't agree more. I wrote a blog post about it a while back demonstrating my take on this. Here's common household appliances getting web interfaces that can be accessed with any smartphone by QR Code. No arduino or soldering mains current required. I think every electronic thing in my house should have a little QR Code next to it so I can just point my phone at it and get its interface.

http://www.thesinglestep.org/thoughts/qrcontrol/

The video halfway down shows it in action.

[nkozyra]

Arduino or Raspberry Pi are kind of overkill for this ...

USB breakout board -> MSP430 -> LEDs/Buzzers/Whatever

You're talking somewhere around $14.

Yes, you'll need to know C or assembly for the MSP430 and likely a scripting language for the PC, but it makes a lot more sense than bringing in all of that horsepower to essentially get an I/O and light an LED.

[mnutt]

Your solution works totally fine, but it also involves using an entire computer to run the thing, which may or may not be overkill depending on whether or not you already have a computer that can be dedicated to it. Personally, I prefer these kinds of projects to be self-contained.

[voltagex_]

What protection do you use for the Pi's GPIOs?