Hi, I would like to make a program for arduino that can control the lights in my home using an Ethernet Shield. I was thinking that I could have it retrieve emails from gmail (I would make a separate email address for it) and then turn on the appropriate light with a wireless appliance switch. I know how to connect an Arduino to the remote control for the appliance switches, but i do not know how to make the ethernet shield retrieve an email. I read on another forum that you could use a webserver and PHP to send a HTTP POST to the arduino, but I do not know how to use PHP, so I would like to avoid learning another programming language if I can. I would also like to avoid using my computer with the Arduino as I don't want to have to leave my computer on if I want to turn on the lights in my home. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
calebgerth99:
Is it possible to use any other webmail service that is not ssl?
If your mail provider doesn't require SSL then you have a chance, but you would need to write/find code implementing the client support for whatever mail protocol and authentication mechanism you needed to use. Unfortunately there are a lot to choose from, fortunately most of them are quite simple.
What if i used www.tropo.com. Then I could control the lights from my phone with a text message or a call. I still need guidance on how to get a tropo script to send the information to the Arduino. Any help would be greatly appreciated.