So you use the Spark Photon as the master "controller." It will allow you to remotely control any of its pins via REST API commands. You then connect the power tail and switch relay to the Photon and you are done. You can issue commands either directly to the device or via a simple web page that you create. The only downside is that it currently only supports Wifi.
As I think about it, you could use a Raspberry Pi to do the same thing and it will plug into wired Ethernet. It also has pins that you can control remotely and in that case your are dealing with a mini computer and so you can easily SSH into it to run the scripts or run them via a web page. It is quite easy actually.
I am a techie at heart and have 4 Raspberry Pis and 4 Spark devices floating around my house. The possibilities with all of them are endless!
