One way of making your microcontroller do real work is to use outputs to control appliances. This can obviously be done wiring up your own relays, but unless you are a qualified electrician, you aren’t allowed to do your own 240V wiring.
Various experimenters have discovered that they can hack remote control switches. This means you don’t have to deal with the mains voltage circuit. Commonly they decode the 433MHz wireless transmission, but at least one user has gone for the simpler route of wiring the remote control.
Here’s models known to be available in Australia:
Kambrook RF3672 (3 x indoor), RF3689 (2 x outdoor), RF3399 (indoor), RF3405 (outdoor)
Available from Bunnings
- Reverse engineering the RF protocol on a Kambrook Power Point Controller
- Smartening up the Kambrook RF3399 Power Point Controller
- Kambrook Remote Power Outlet & Arduino – working
Jackson PT9723
Available from Masters, Officeworks
- Jackson PT9723 remote power control and Arduino – a neat example that hacks the remote control rather than decoding the wireless protocol.
Bauhn
Available from Aldi
Belkin WeMo
This doesn’t use a conventional remote, it is a remote switch controlled by an iOS or Android app over WiFi or 3G/4G networking. See my initial impressions here. They also provide an SDK so you can incorporate it into your own app.
Articles
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Android/Arduino RF Outlets Selector – here they have hacked the remote to decode the protocol, haven’t seen these power switches available in Australia yet, but useful info in the article.