wjw:

No worries on response time--real life often happens to get in the way of things.

It sounds like an interesting project. I expect you already know, but just in case you don't, you might want to look over some of stevieb's stuff--he does a bunch of RPi/Perl stuff, including a book and some cpan modules.

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.