OK, so another piece of the control puzzle may be falling into place. I purchased two small 5v relays off eBay. These should allow me to use the outgoing signals from the Raspberry Pi to control things like power to switches, signals or other on-off devices. Since the relays totally isolate the Pi from whatever is being controlled, I don’t have to worry about too much voltage flowing back into the Pi and killing it. The biggest problem, and something I need to work out, is that these are really meant to be triggered at 5 volts where the Pi only puts out 3.3 volts. I have heard it will work, but only testing will tell.
I also bought a small breadboard, something that is amazing that I never had before, some connecting wires, and a Adafruit T-Cobler connector board. Oh, and a 16×2 HD44780 LED display that I want to use to have the Pi constantly output its status and network address.
Finally, since it falls into the same vein, kind of, I will be going to the Palmetto Open Source Software Conference next week in Columbia, SC. I am going for work due to Linux administration, web servers, and other open source software, but it will be good to SparkFun folks who are doing some Open Hardware demos. Puzzle me that one Batman!
Oh! And lastly, because I like cool links, a list of the top 10 things (so far) to hook up to your Raspberry Pi.
