RGB just got a lot brighter by using 3x60Watt flood lights instead of an LED. The bulbs are driven via TRIACs and the whole thing uses a remote control to change the levels of the three bulbs. It is also able to store these levels for later recall. The IR receiver was taken from a dead TV set along with its remote control, or a universal remote set to a Phillips TV can be used. The source code and schematic for this project are available.
this is interesting but the first thing i noticed was that there are flood lamps housed in what looks like a cardboard box. then there is huge disclaimer about the dangers of ac electricity, but the circuit itself is not in a proper grounded case. finally it says “Dimming the lights cannot be done via PWM as LEDs are. The lamps must be phase controlled.” Phase control is a type of PWM, so they actually are dimmed via PWM.
Also, another small blog posted this on 9/19. Do they deserve a little credit for finding it? (it wasn’t my blog this time).
I would have like to see a better enclosure as well, Phase controlled is a bit different from PWM, if the bulbs were to switch on all at the same time they would blow fuses. I did not see this on another blog or I certainly would have mentioned it. I found this as a bigger version the RGB LED write up I did earlier via Google images.
Turning all on at the same time wouldn’t blow any fuses, because the load would be about 3 * 5 * 60 = 900W, when the lights are cold. When controlling the brightness with phase-cutting, like everybody does with AC lights, they aren’t cold when you turn on the triac. Light aren’t inductive loads, they just have a lower resistance when they’re cold.
This is pretty neat. I did sort of a similar project recently but used arduino and got 12″ LED stop lights and made a real time build monitor for my companies CC.NET build server.
I did the same thing with many small LEDs to backlight my plasma and controlled it with a Harmony. The video and pictures are at my blog http://www.elkhashab.com. (Video doesn’t work under IE though). If you know how to fix it, lemme know.
This could be useful for photography effects.
I’m very happy of the favor this project met. Of course the improvised look should not be kept as a reference for definitive setup : a box (grounded or plastic) is a must, cardboard is never a good construction material. Regular lamp holders should be used in place.
Photo effects : yes, I designed this as a configurable background for photo sets, but a better way to mix the light is necessary (like sanded glass) otherwise nasty coloured shadows might appear.
Cheers.
5Volt
Cyclorama….
Every theater has banks of these. In fact if you look up the history of it… you will see that the Broadway play version of Madame Butterfly was the first play to use this and the play sold out not cause it was a good play(it sucked!) but because it had a scene that went from night to daylight using a bank on the floor and on a fly rail onto a back drop that cycled through the colors of dawn that took 5 minutes. This scene alone made the play famous for this effect… Puccini loved it so much that he bought the rights and wrote an opera version with a 3.5 minutes interlude in the last act.
Looks like a fun project, especially with the remote… but it has been around for over 100 years now.
There is obviously a lot to know about this. I think you made some good points.Keep working ,great job!