programmatically controlling power sockets in the UK

Posted by cartoonfox on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by cartoonfox
Published on 2009-12-25T00:50:50Z Indexed on 2010/05/11 6:44 UTC
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Filed under:

electronics

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interfacing

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parallel-port

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serial-port

It's very simple.

I want to plug a lamp into the UK mains supply.

I want to be able to power it on and off from software - say from serial port commands, or by running a command-line or something I can get to from ruby or Java.

I see lots written about how to do this with X10 with American power systems - but has anybody actually tried doing this in the UK?

If you got this working:

1) Exactly what hardware did you use?

2) How do you control it from software?

Thanks!

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