BobLight Night Light Networking

It turns out that more than just pictures of women and flashing animations can be found on the X10 website. [Jonathan] based his BobLight project around the MS14A X10 module.

The idea for the devices started off as a Christmas gift for his parents in-law. A boblight turns on when motion is detected. It then communicates (through radio) with the other boblights to turn them all on. If motion is not detected by any of the boblights for a length of time, they all turn off. Rather than having the user shut all of them off every morning, a light sensor is used to automate the task.

Each boblight is a common LED utility light combined with the board of an MS14A and added a 310MHz RF receiver. He even hacked the board by replacing the onboard PIC with a higher spec model. We think [Jonathan] did a great job at implementing an innovative concept.

10 thoughts on “BobLight Night Light Networking

  1. pretty neat. Now, replace the LEDs with Luxeon 1W emitters :) no cooling required for short duty cycles.

    fwiw there is a nice little PIR module obtainable for under $10 on greedbay, draws fractions of a mA.

    add solar cells + nimh maybe? also, another useful trick is to “recycle” the broken rf modules from wireless doorbells and car alarm keys, as they all use pretty much the same setup.

    iirc its a single transistor oscillator using a 433MHz module as the tuning element, and you are allowed to homebrew these as long as you stick to the prescribed layout, aerial length and mark the casing MPT1340 W/T License Exempt.

    i’d also add a hard shutdown to the module so it sends the transmit code once only to prevent “spamming” the band.
    (see EPE magazine for many projects using these)

  2. the x10-site is for sure one you remember even after one visit.
    so, not my fault really that i misread the description at first glance: ..”based his booblight project around the ms14y x10 modul”..

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