[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.
People are so lazy and use arduinos for everything, this could have been made much simpler…. wait
@Brad
:D
i´m building a 4-channel dimmeable controller with arduino. Would love to see some IR learning example with duinos.
It’s okay Brad, the remote was in fact Arduino-based. ;)
Jesus Christ HAD! Have you instituted a policy of stealing EVERY post that Hacked Gadgets puts up?
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.
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.
MOC3043 costs about 1$, triac BTA08 is 0.5$, PIC is 1.2$ on ebay :)
How cheap are you, man?
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.
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.
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!