DorkbotPDX people doing strange things with electricity

Background: Played with basic stamp in the past. Let the magic smoke out of alot of electronic widgets (including a 3 million dollar electron microscope... but that was my job sorta) Went to the indoctrination, parts 1 and 2. I now have a nice arduino (bare bones) that I've been fiddling with, thinking about.... temp control in the greenhouse I built last year replacing the cheezy IR remote control on a centipede "robot" that I ordered from Japan last year, to make it a real live robot