relay for small house appliance control

Hi forum! I'm looking where to find a power relay too switch on/off a house appliance using 220V and rather low current (for example a light or a small machine) by using a 5V control voltage with max. 30 mA current. Is there a relay with such values? Can I use a microcontroller circuit outputing these values (5V vs. 0V) as a switch to use in an application like this??
Can you point me into a relay model i can use for this??
thanks in advance for any answer and sorry for the newbie question (new in electronics, just trying hard...)
Ivan

 

[WalterHarris]

Ivan,

A 220 volt relay just requires that you switch both legs off and on. Their are many small coil type "Contactors" that do this. All the major brands such as Siemans, Honeywell, etc have them. You can find them in McMaster Carr, or Grainger, in fact you might try a solid state relay Omron makes a G3NA series that uses 5 to 24 volt input an is good for 24 to 240 volt output. With a heat sink they say they come up to 40 amp rating. This one is straight out of Grainger catalog.

Have fun. Mechanical Engineer