Office Desk Web Control

Background

In my company we have these nice height adjustable desks. The desktop computer is attached just under the desk. The motor controller is very simple and accepts input from a couple of RJ45 ports, of which only one is used by the hardware buttons. So, why not to use the second available port to control the desk via a web interface? A simple web API also allows me to control the position of the desk via keyboard shortcut; just bind the shortcut to a curl call with the right parameters and the desk will go up and down like magic.

Realization

A simple python web server is running on the PC. Via USB, it is connected to an Arduino Nano that controls a simple two channel relay. The relay is just short-circuiting once one cable (desk goes up), once the other (desk goes down). Very nice and simple.