Update: IR controlled lighting

posted Apr 26th 2010 11:00am by Mike Szczys
filed under: classic hacks, home hacks

[Muris] is back with another infrared controlled lighting hack. When we checked in with him last year he was showing off an IR controlled dimmer module. Now he’s back with this device that is CFL friendly. Because standard CFL bulbs are not dimmer compatible he’s adapted the project away from dimming and toward switching. The new design still uses an infrared remote but now it can turn two devices on and off again or toggle between them. Our favorite part of the build is that the PIC based device can learn the codes of whichever remote you choose, rather than having to rely on one specific type of remote.

Comments [11]

tagged: dimmer, infrared, ir, pic, switch

11 Responses to Update: IR controlled lighting

Brad says:

April 26, 2010 at 11:16 am

People are so lazy and use arduinos for everything, this could have been made much simpler…. wait

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pod says:

April 26, 2010 at 11:22 am

@Brad
:D

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Allan Sommer says:

April 26, 2010 at 11:26 am

i´m building a 4-channel dimmeable controller with arduino. Would love to see some IR learning example with duinos.

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fluidic says:

April 26, 2010 at 12:23 pm

It’s okay Brad, the remote was in fact Arduino-based. ;)

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Brock_Lee says:

April 27, 2010 at 4:35 am

Jesus Christ HAD! Have you instituted a policy of stealing EVERY post that Hacked Gadgets puts up?

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Caleb Kraft says:

April 27, 2010 at 6:26 am

Brock_lee,
The person who made this emailed us directly. If you look at other posts, we always give credit to where we found it. Especially HackedGadgets. Alan finds (and makes) some great stuff.

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nes says:

April 27, 2010 at 7:02 am

If he’s only ever driving lamps then the switch element could be done cheaper by full wave rectifying the AC and using a FET instead. The MOC304* / triac combination works out quite pricey (>> the cost of the PIC), and is not really necessary unless varying the duty cycle of the load.

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markii says:

April 27, 2010 at 7:25 am

MOC3043 costs about 1$, triac BTA08 is 0.5$, PIC is 1.2$ on ebay :)
How cheap are you, man?

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M4CGYV3R says:

April 27, 2010 at 8:25 am

Nifty. I think I need to make something similar(but not IR controlled) to launch fireworks this summer. Maybe I’ll go super overboard and make it a missile launch console with keypad and launch codes and all.

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Odje says:

April 30, 2010 at 6:23 am

What is special about this to make it suitable for CFL? From what I have read is that the standard leading edge dimming is not suitable for CFL due to the current peaks when switching on. So a reverse phase or trailing edge dimming must be used which TRIAC’s can not do.

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dohn says:

May 2, 2010 at 5:46 am

i think that his previous project couldn’t control the CFL bulbs. this one can – only to turn them on/off and is dual channeled!

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