So what's a good way to build a build lava lamp in 2015? I'm thinking wall adapter that has wifi and offers a simple webserver that switches on and off on POST.
Something neat that I found out recently is the existence of solid-state-relays. They are basically opto-couplers that can directly switch a load. You can use them instead of normal relays, and drive them directly from a digital io pin. Pretty sweet.
Or just get a particle photon with the relay shield. Extremely easy to set up, and it comes with a REST API.
Of course you'd have to code the plug server to add the appropriate CORS headers but that's true no matter how you structure the API.
You could either replace 'smartplug' with the local ip of the device or alias it in `/etc/hosts`. All pretty standard stuff these days. If you wanted to expose it to the outside world (which actually should be hard to do) you would use DHCP reservation based on it's MAC address and a DynDNS service.
The part that stymies me (and which no-one seems interested in addressing!) is what hardware to get.
as far as hardware for the actual lamp itself, it looks like melting some colored candles and some water in a glass jar over an incandescent bulb should suffice for starters. more advanced "ooze" formula including anti-freeze found here: http://oozinggoo.com/ll-form5.html
I find it pretty incredible something like this doesn't already exist from a major manufacturer! I mean, I understand why Belkin/GE/etc want to lock you into their ecosystem, but it seems not that hard to build an open alternative - and eat their collective lunches.
