• Nothing is pressed
• The ON button is pressed (SW1)
• The OFF button is pressed (SW2)

• I've only shown the pins on the remote that you need to connect to, rather than drawing the whole circuit. You already soldered jumper wires to these pins in Step 4, so you should be able to plop their other ends right into the breadboard.
• This is where the Raspberry Pi's wildly non-intuitive pin numbering schemecan be quite confusing for a new user, especially if you're used to an Arduino. I won't go into details here - this page has a good explanation if you scroll down to "A word about GPIO pin numberings...". I've provided a simplified diagram that highlights the pins you need to use for this project, which will hopefully be less confusing than the diagram on their Wiki initially was for me. Point being, you need to connect to +5V (P1-02), GND (P1-06), GPIO 17 (P1-11) and GPIO 18 (P1-12), as shown.
• The colors I used in my diagrams don't match photos of my physical circuit perfectly, because I only had red and black hookup wire. You can use whatever color scheme you want, as long as you get the connections right.

# Raspberry Pi custom Christmas light timer

# import GPIO module
import RPi.GPIO as GPIO

# set up GPIO pins as outputs
# This convention is for the "P1" header pin convention
# where the pins start with P1 in the upper left
# and go to P26 in the lower right, with odds in the
# left column and evens in the right column.
# So, pins P1-11 and P1-12 correspond to GPIO17 and
# GPIO18 respectively.
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BOARD)
GPIO.setup(11, GPIO.OUT)
GPIO.setup(12, GPIO.OUT)

# import date and time modules
import datetime
import time

# Enter the times you want the lights to turn on and off for
# each day of the week. Default is for lights to turn on at
# 5:30pm and off at 10:30pm on weekdays, on at 5:00pm and off
# at 11:30pm on weekends. Note that this is using a 24-hour clock.

MonOn  = datetime.time(hour=17,minute=30,second=0)
MonOff = datetime.time(hour=22,minute=30,second=0)
TueOn  = datetime.time(hour=17,minute=30,second=0)
TueOff = datetime.time(hour=22,minute=30,second=0)
WedOn  = datetime.time(hour=17,minute=30,second=0)
WedOff = datetime.time(hour=22,minute=30,second=0)
ThuOn  = datetime.time(hour=17,minute=30,second=0)
ThuOff = datetime.time(hour=22,minute=30,second=0)
FriOn  = datetime.time(hour=17,minute=30,second=0)
FriOff = datetime.time(hour=22,minute=30,second=0)
SatOn  = datetime.time(hour=17,minute=0,second=0)
SatOff = datetime.time(hour=23,minute=30,second=0)
SunOn  = datetime.time(hour=17,minute=0,second=0)
SunOff = datetime.time(hour=23,minute=30,second=0)

# Store these times in an array for easy access later.
OnTime = [MonOn, TueOn, WedOn, ThuOn, FriOn, SatOn, SunOn]
OffTime = [MonOff, TueOff, WedOff, ThuOff, FriOff, SatOff, SunOff]

# Set a "wait time" in seconds. This ensures that the program pauses
# briefly after it turns the lights on or off. Otherwise, since the
# loop will execute more than once a second, it will try to keep
# turning the lights on when they are already on (or off when they are
# already off.

waitTime = 3

# Start the loop that will run until you stop the program or turn
# off your Raspberry Pi.

while True:

    # get the current time in hours, minutes and seconds
    currTime = datetime.datetime.now()
    # get the current day of the week (0=Monday, 1=Tuesday, 2=Wednesday...)
    currDay = datetime.datetime.now().weekday()

    #Check to see if it's time to turn the lights on
    if (currTime.hour - OnTime[currDay].hour == 0 and
        currTime.minute - OnTime[currDay].minute == 0 and
        currTime.second - OnTime[currDay].second == 0):

        # set the GPIO pin to HIGH, equivalent of
        # pressing the ON button on the remote
        GPIO.output(11, GPIO.HIGH)

        # wait for a very short period of time then set
        # the value to LOW, the equivalent of releasing the
        # ON button
        time.sleep(.5)
        GPIO.output(11, GPIO.LOW)

        # wait for a few seconds so the loop doesn't come
        # back through and press the "on" button again
        # while the lights ae already on
        time.sleep(waitTime)

    #check to see if it's time to turn the lights off
    elif (currTime.hour - OffTime[currDay].hour == 0 and
        currTime.minute - OffTime[currDay].minute == 0 and
        currTime.second - OffTime[currDay].second == 0):

        # set the GPIO pin to HIGH, equivalent of
        # pressing the OFF button on the remote
        GPIO.output(12, GPIO.HIGH)

        # wait for a very short period of time then set
        # the value to LOW, the equivalent of releasing the
        # OFF button
        time.sleep(.5)
        GPIO.output(12, GPIO.LOW)

        # wait for a few seconds so the loop doesn't come
        # back through and press the "off" button again
        # while the lights ae already off
        time.sleep(waitTime)

TueOn  = datetime.time(hour=17,minute=30,second=0)
TueOff = datetime.time(hour=22,minute=30,second=0)

TueOn  = datetime.time(hour=15,minute=32,second=0)
TueOff = datetime.time(hour=15,minute=33,second=0)

• Make sure your wireless outlet and remote work to begin with. Disconnect the remote from your circuit entirely, and try just pressing the ON and OFF buttons. Sometimes these things don't have a great range, so try moving closer to the outlet.
• Use a multimeter to check all the voltages you should be getting on the breadboard:
  • Are you actually getting +5V from the +5V pin?
  • Use the continuity test on your multimeter to check for short circuits.
  • Use the command line in Python to manually set the GPIO pins to HIGH one at a time (you can copy and paste the appropriate lines of code from my file to the command line). Do you get 3.3V from each pin when you do this? Remember to set the pins to LOW again afterwards.
  • Does the output of the relay actually toggle between 0V and 5V when the relay switches positions?
• Make sure your relays are working by manually connecting the electromagnet (the end of the relay that has two pins directly across from each other, see the circuit diagrams in Step 6) to +5V and GND. You should hear an audible "click" when you do this.
• Double and triple-check all your jumper wires. It only takes one missed connection, or something accidentally shorting +5V to GND, to stop the whole thing from working.
• Make sure it isn't something obvious, like an electrical outlet in your house that is also controlled by a light switch on the wall.

shell ~> crontab -e

0  9 * * * /path/to/your/python/script.py on
0 21 * * * /path/to/your/python/script.py off

#!/usr/bin/env python
import sys
import RPi.GPIO as GPIO

# Identify which pin controls transistor
FAN_PIN = 4

# Set pin 4 as output
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
GPIO.setup(FAN_PIN, GPIO.OUT)

# Get what action to take
action = sys.argv.pop()

if action == "on" :
   print "Turning fan on"
   GPIO.output(FAN_PIN, GPIO.HIGH)
elif action == "off" :
   print "Turning fan off"
   GPIO.output(FAN_PIN, GPIO.LOW)
else :
   print "Don't know what to do"