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Turning power outlets on and off with my computer?

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Howard_Casto:
I have pretty good luck with ebay so long as a buy from someone with an ebay store and not "some guy."   

About the only thing I've ever been burned on was a maddog cd that was supposed to be a windows xp version but ended up being the dos version.  When I asked about a refund the lady who I bought it off of said to send it back (I pay shipping) and she would exchange it.  Well I only paid 5 bucks for it and it would be 8 bucks shipping so I just kept it. 

Anyway I would check ebay.  You can't really get a discount on home automation stuff unless you buy it off the ebay.

nitz:
Well, I may consider it if I could get it through an ebay store. But I dunno. I always bought from people with at least 98% feedback and lots of votes, and still, some of the crap they pulled was ridiculous. After the third time I got burned I said, "That's it. Never again!" I did have some great experiences with some folks, but like everything else in life, all it takes is a few jerks to ruin it.  ::)

I'd have to think about it. Thanks for your help guys.

Vigo:
Just a suggestion:

Would it be possibly to buy one of those remote control outlet supplies, then get an arduino board, and soldier wires from the button leads on the remote control to the arduino outputs. Then, I think it is a matter of creating a simple button press program with the arduino software.

I have never used an arduino before, but from everyone I hear they are easy peasy to program commands into. It is a solution that is under $50, and I think I would even be able to do it if I wanted to. It is safe too, because you would not be tampering with the actual AC power.


It's pretty much a quick hack of what Howard mentioned in his first post.

nitz:
Thanks for the suggestion Vigo, but I found an ebay store with an awesome rating (99.6% and 25,000+ votes) that has all the X10 stuff I would need for about $40 shipped - very reasonable. Looks like the easiest way to do it, so in spite of my leeriness of ebay, I think I'm gonna go for it.

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