A really neat board that I have seen demonstrated by Amy Youngs is the I0-204 IO Bridge. The board that connects to the web and creates a network connection, DHCP transaction, Starts DNS resolution, looks for gateway and authenticates the connection. 

The IO-204 bridge can be networked with a 10/100/1000 DHCP Wired Ethernet network. It has four I and O channels of Analog /Digital input and Digital output pins. 

Amy Youngs will be using this to attach to here Museum for Insects for web activated and viewed cricket world. In this case, she used a small relay though not a solid state relay. The relay she used was a 5 volt reed relay from Radio Shack.

Four channels, Analog Input, Digital Output, Digital Input. Power 5  VDC. 500 MA. The board has a nice tutorials section.

Using a phone to control the relay board from the IO Bridge. Using digital output from the board Amy Youngs hooked up a radio shack reed relay and drove a 3 volt output to drive a servo motor attached to an artificial cricket.

With this input and output board controlled via the phone you were able to control both the turning of the cricket as well as switch miniature spot lights off and on in the Museum for Insects. You can learn more about the project here.

For the first exhibition Amy Youngs invited me to populate the museum with rapid prototyping works such as the Rodeo Cricket in the foreground, the legs mobile and the cricket jungle jim to the right side. Here you can see what the image from the window looked like in the first exhibition in the Museum for insects for some works I created for this wonderful space and museum.

Amy also used a webcam so people from afar could peer into the Museum of Insects from anywhere on the WWW as well as from their mobile phones.

Museum for Insects by Amy Youngs. Installation of interior works by Ken Rinaldo