{"id":97,"date":"2011-12-02T17:55:23","date_gmt":"2011-12-02T17:55:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/howiem.org\/wordpress\/?p=97"},"modified":"2011-12-02T17:55:23","modified_gmt":"2011-12-02T17:55:23","slug":"new-project-hs-lights-controller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/howiem.org\/wordpress\/2011\/12\/02\/new-project-hs-lights-controller\/","title":{"rendered":"New project: h&#8217;s Lights controller"},"content":{"rendered":"[Update: 3D render of the board! Woo]\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<a title=\"3-chan-ardu-v1 by howiemnet, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/howiemnet\/6459350889\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7161\/6459350889_54caeb12e4.jpg\" alt=\"3-chan-ardu-v1\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nI&#8217;ve been putting LED lights up around the house, driven by solar panels. Free light. Yummy. To save precious power, and because they look cool, I like the lights to be automatic &#8211; fade up automatically when you enter a room, fade out when it senses you&#8217;ve gone. It&#8217;s a simple thing to build a circuit to control it all, but it gets a bit tedious building the same circuit over and over again, so I&#8217;m getting some PCBs made up.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/howiem.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Screen-shot-2011-12-02-at-16.30.00.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-98\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-12-02 at 16.30.00\" src=\"https:\/\/howiem.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Screen-shot-2011-12-02-at-16.30.00-300x195.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"195\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Just finished the board design. There are connections for:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>12V in<\/li>\n<li>PIR (burglar alarm sensors) or a push-button on\/off switch<\/li>\n<li>3 outputs for 12V LED strips &#8211; max 1A each, roughly 2 metres of standard LED strip per channel<\/li>\n<li>plus some extra input\/outputs for hacking.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The basic specs:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>12v supply &#8211; so ideal for car battery and solar panels<\/li>\n<li>drives 3 channels of LEDs separately &#8211; or 1 string of full colour RGB LEDs<\/li>\n<li>PWM fading with a custom fade curve &#8211; lights fade in and out sexily<\/li>\n<li>Sequencing &#8211; have lights fade up or down in sequence when triggered<\/li>\n<li>senses when the battery\/supply is low and reduces light output &#8211; &#8220;moon mode&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>4 separate inputs &#8211; use with PIR sensors, buttons, switches, light detectors, temperature sensors etc<\/li>\n<li>onboard self-resetting fuse<\/li>\n<li>hacker-friendly &#8211;\u00a0 it&#8217;s arduino \/ atmega based, so hobbyists can program their own setups<\/li>\n<li>ISP connector for programming in-situ if that&#8217;s your thing<\/li>\n<li>bonus breadboard area for adding components \/ input buffers if necessary<\/li>\n<li>fits in a standard Camden Boss RX2010 box &#8211; buy from RS, Maplins, Rapid, Farnell etc<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Hoping to sell some. Haven&#8217;t worked out a price yet, nor how to market the thing. It&#8217;s highly configurable, but that&#8217;s a double-edged sword &#8211; I think it&#8217;s going to be easiest for people to understand if I can give them usage examples. Perhaps:<\/p>\n<p>1. Automatic power-saving lighting system for homes, caravans and boats.<\/p>\n<p>2. Colour-corrected lights for office use<\/p>\n<p>3. SAD light &#8211; control the colour temperature to match dawn\/dusk or midday sunlight<\/p>\n<p>4. Shops and bars &#8211; automatic display lights<\/p>\n<p>5. Industrial use &#8211; automatic bathroom \/ hall lights<\/p>\n<p>6. Wake-up lights for winter use &#8211; have your bedroom lights fade up automatically at a certain time of the morning to replicate summer (will require a separately available clock\/alarm unit)<\/p>\n<p>Hmm&#8230; tricky to know how to approach marketing. I mean, it&#8217;s an utterly basic box, just a microcontroller with 3 big transistors, but with the right firmware it&#8217;ll do all sorts of handy things. It&#8217;ll be a god-send to me, but can I make it sound attractive (and simple) to non-hacker types?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Update: 3D render of the board! Woo] &nbsp; &nbsp; I&#8217;ve been putting LED lights up around the house, driven by solar panels. Free light. Yummy. To save precious power, and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-97","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-electronics-and-hackery"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/howiem.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/howiem.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/howiem.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howiem.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howiem.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/howiem.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/howiem.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howiem.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/howiem.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}