An old and crude version

The first version of the Caretaker base station was built with a FoxBoard and a hacked remote control that was available in most hardware stores for just a few bucks

Get a set of remote controlled power switches from your local hardware or electronics store. As you can see in the images above, I attached some 4066 analog switch circuits to the remote control, i.e. each of the 4066 switches shorts a switch of the remote. The 4066 integrated circuits are mounted on top of the remote control. The input pins of the 4066s are then connected (the green wires) to some port pins of a FoxBoard which can then control the power switches.

The main drawback was, that you didn't get any feedback from the switches, if you'd use another unhacked remote control.