I started this project because I wanted to get into IoT stuff. I thought one day "hey, it would be cool if I could tell my coffee maker to start making coffee so I don't have to walk downstairs and wait for it to finish." I used some different libraries and software in an attempt to best configure the program I made, and settled on the ones I did because of how easy they are to set up. Also, all of the software used in this tutorial is free for anyone to use.

This project uses email or text messaging to start a coffee maker, but this same hardware and programming can be applied to anything with an 'on' button; if you wanted, you could set up a bunch of cheap PiZs and control your entire house without the need for an expensive IoT hub or service. Also, since it uses an email account, you can activate the device(s) from anywhere in the world.

This was literally my first time using Python, GPIO pins, a boost converter, and fetchmail. This project was a great learning experience for me and I hope it is for you as well! This instructable should also be relatively easy for beginners; I'm not an engineer or a professional software engineer, and I only do projects like these as a hobby.

This is my first Instructable, so I'll be updating it continuously for a while.