New To arduino - looking for guidance on a project

Projects Discussion and Showcase Home Automation
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Hello Everyone. I've been reading up on Arduino, and looking to jump into it. I wanted to take on a project that sounds simple enough, but has some room to really expend. I wanted to bounce the idea off of everyone in here first though to get some thoughts on it, because despite my googling (maybe I'm just not googling the right things), I haven't found any examples yet!

I wanted to build some smart outlets for my home. I'm a huge fan of home automation. Though the hardware is new to me, I've been a web developer for 10 years working on heavy backend systems. So programming isn't anything new to me, just this application for it.

Here's that I'm imaging would go into it, and where I'd love some feedback/guidance. Just start with one arduino uno board, and ethernet shield (What's PoE and the difference in the two shields I see with and without it?). I'll also need something that can do a simple on/off with the power lines in a house (probably 15-20A max), and ideally power the arduino board from this same power while giving it as small of a physical footprint as possible. As a web developer, I'd love to have a home server that can see all of these devices. The home server isn't an issue since that's where my background is. Does that board/shield work really well together? Are there better alternatives?

My road map... I'd like to make multiples of these once I start getting it down, then improving them, using wireless shields. For security purposes, I'd never have anything of high significance on these, but I'd love the option for them.

A final phase would be pairing a smart outlet with a smart wall switch. I'd love to be able to have a switch control an outlet even when they aren't wired together. Getting a power line to one of them can be enough of a pain, and why should it need to go further than that?

So like I said, I'm new to Arduino, but I've been writing code for a number of years now. What do you guys think of this project? Has anyone done anything similar before? I'd love to hear some of the concerns that came with it. Since I'm looking for a way to wire it to the house, lol, I know I'll need a little additional hardware, but for the basic platform, I though this was a good a place as any to begin. If no one has any thoughts that might be an issue for it, then I think I'll be moving ahead pretty soon with this one!

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"PoE" is "Power over Ethernet". It is a standard for using spare wires on the Ethernet cable to provide DC power to remote Ethernet devices that are not near an AC outlet. Some Ethernet routers are capable of providing PoE on some or all of their ports and if your router doesn't provide PoE you can use a power injector to add power to the cable after it leaves the router.

Were you planning to run AC and Ethernet to every Smart Outlet?

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Thanks for the explanation on that one. I think i'd prototype something that I can just have sitting on my desk next to me in an initial build, and that's just use ethernet and AC. I think once I got something like that working and a web interface I felt happy with, I'd look at starting to move towards wifi instead.

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Have a look at Jonathan Oxer's http://superhouse.tv/, there's lots of good ideas there. Cheers

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Check out DIY Home Automation for Beginners. (http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Home-Automation-for-Beginners-Absolutely-No-co/) for a very quick way to get up and running.

Gives you your own customizable Android controller to switch power relays on and off with absolutely no coding required. All the Arduino code is generated for your to your specification and the Android app pfodApp (www.pfod.com.au) is a universal app that will control any thing and is completely configured from the Arduino code.

Works with bluetooth, wifi or internet. You optionally have 128bit security on the wifi/internet connections.
email me at www.pfod.com.au via support if you need help