Welp, second try with GPIO and it's also a fail.

This time I'm blaming the vendor because they claimed 3.3v was enough to switch their relay block and it is NOT. Even 5v doesn't do it, it takes 12v to switch the relays.

I'm officially done playing EE, the point of this project was to be *easy*, so I just ordered a relay module that I can talk to via USB.