New to arduino, need guidance for a new project

Projects General Guidance
1

I saw this project on instructables:http://www.instructables.com/id/Twitter-Controlled-Pet-Feeder/

I already have this same cat feeder and I like the idea of being able to feed my cats while I'm away. I'd like to improve upon her project by using a wifi shield so that I don't have the cabling. I'm also pretty sure there is a better way to interface with the cat feeder. Also, I don't have a smart phone so instead of using twitter I'd like to be able to use plain old SMS. I figure I can just text an email address and this will be the arduino's input.

My questions are:

I haven't purchased anything yet, but I'm thinking just an UNO plus a wifi shield should get me going. Does this sound correct?

Has anyone seen code that will check an email account and treat messages as input? I may be able to manipulate her code if I can't find something more suitable.

Thanks for your help.

2

Jfitzsi1:
I saw this project on instructables:http://www.instructables.com/id/Twitter-Controlled-Pet-Feeder/

I already have this same cat feeder and I like the idea of being able to feed my cats while I'm away. I'd like to improve upon her project by using a wifi shield so that I don't have the cabling. I'm also pretty sure there is a better way to interface with the cat feeder. Also, I don't have a smart phone so instead of using twitter I'd like to be able to use plain old SMS. I figure I can just text an email address and this will be the arduino's input.

My questions are:

I haven't purchased anything yet, but I'm thinking just an UNO plus a wifi shield should get me going. Does this sound correct?

If you have wifi in your house, it looks right. If you have wired ethernet, you would want a wired ethernet shield. I would still want to have somebody look in on your cats from time to time, and not rely on everything working automatically.

While I'm still somewhat new to Arduinos, I took a quick scan of the instructable, and I think it could be simplified a little bit. It looks like the person did a homemade opto-isolator using photo LEDs. I would think you could replace them with a regular opto-isolator which you should be able to get at Radio Shack. Here is a howto that describes them:
http://arduino-info.wikispaces.com/Popular-ICs

Jfitzsi1:
Has anyone seen code that will check an email account and treat messages as input? I may be able to manipulate her code if I can't find something more suitable.

Thanks for your help.

I haven't used it, but somebody else mentioned ifttt and I noted down the bookmark: http://ifttt.com/.