Control your household lamps and your garage doors via the internet

There are times we forget to turn off the lights when we leave the house, or worse, we left the garage door open! Sure we can automate the lights on/off but that leaves control over a timing device without the satisfaction of a personal control. Knowing myself (a control-geek), I wanted that control and the challenge of building the system. I found this: http://connect.iobridge.com/tutorials/open-and-close-your-garage-door-over-the-internet/.
I ordered the items, hacked a few items (the garage door remote) and did a little soldering. Previously, I installed a garage-door monitoring sensor that would turn-on a lamp (by the TV) when the door is left open. The sensor triggers a code and sends it to the receiver which turns the lamp on or off. This signal can also be used to automatically send email to a recipient verifying the status of the garage door.
The camera was located in the garage but have moved it (see view on the right)  facing directly to house where a full-view of the house can be seen. Camera location: the mailbox. So comes the idea to build a mailbox housing the wifi camera. Since the mailbox is about 25 yards from the house, running an electrical wire would be too expensive or too dangerous. So a 15-watt solar panel provides the charge to the 12 volt battery used to power the camera. The camera idea came to reality. See photos below.

Camera located at the post of the mailbox.

View showing proximity of the mailbox to the house.

It is about 25 meters. 

The battery is hidden in the flower pot.

(see image generated on the right).

Using Transcend WIFI SD Card

Recently acquired the card and as always I was excited to take it out of the package as soon as it got into my hands. The WiFi SD card is the the better answer to EYE-FI's limited memory capacity. The 32-gig is plenty for my Canon S95 which I tag along in my pocket everyday. Browsing the internet, I found that the Transcend card is running a variant linux OS with scripts written in PERL and Javascript (see links below). This is most intriguing. The Card is hackable. Being a consultant in Medical/Industrial Informatics the card could be utilized as a data server and be used for gathering data wirelessly from input devices and transferred to software applications for whatever use there may be. The WiFi card has a built in web-server and could be accessed on any PC besides the published apps for Android/IOS devices. To Connect via your PC you will need to connect your PC:
1. Turn on your WIFI-SD card equipped camera. Temporarily disable automatic shutoff of the camera.
2. (Peer-to-peer or Direct Share) With your PC connect (via wifi) to http://192.168.11.254. This is a connection directly to the wifi server of the camera. If you configure your sd-card using the internet mode (see manual below) connect to your wifi access point/router. On your phone app determine the IP Address of the camera under SETTINGS. This should be within address supplied by your router and starts with 192.168.etc.etc. Use this address in your browser.
3. The default username/password is lowercase "admin". You should now see the browser interface along with the self explanatory menu system. You should now be able  to browse/download your photo/video from your camera wirelessly.

Note that when the setting is in INTERNET MODE you can upload or share the picture by using your facebook, twitter, picasa, flickr, etc. Select the appropriate upload app.

That is all there is to it.

Hacking the Transcend WIFI-SD

http://hackaday.com/2013/08/12/hacking-transcend-wifi-sd-cards/
http://haxit.blogspot.ch/2013/08/hacking-transcend-wifi-sd-cards.html

For camera applications of the Transcend WIFI-SD see:
http://www.transcend-info.com/files/Manual/WiFiSD_Manual_v1.4_EN.pdf