Looks like it might work very nicely, in deed. It seems I could easily add an infrared receiver and use a very simple remote for the manual dimming function... that should be so foolproof I don't need any manual overrides for the dimming, just a main on/off switch in the controller box and everything else is controlled using the the IR remote (plus additonally ethernet/wifi connection from my computer).
Yea, that is basically it.
How far away will this be from you or your computer?