[RobB’s] House Has No Light Switches

July 4, 2012 by Mike Szczys 46 Comments

So [RobB] wanted to take out all the light switches in his house. His plan was to replace them with a system that could be operated from his smart phone. But his wife insisted that there still must be some way to control the lighting directly — we have to agree with her on that one. The solution was to develop a system that switches the lights via a touch sensor or by Bluetooth.

The touch part of the project is pretty easy. He coated the back of a blank outlet plate with tin foil and hooked it to a microcontroller with a couple of resistors. He’s using an ATtiny85, which can be programmed using Arduino sketches, so the software side is made easy by the CapSense Library. The chip also uses the software serial library to communicate with a Bluetooth module. You can see the result of both in the demo video after the break.

Of course you need to throw a relay in there to switch mains, and find a way to power the uC and Bluetooth module. [RobB] went with a tiny plug-in USB power converter and managed to fit everything in a single-gang switch.

Continue reading “[RobB’s] House Has No Light Switches” →

Christmas Prep Starts Early: MIDI Control For Strings Of Lights

July 3, 2012 by Mike Szczys No comments

If you’re planning to outdo yourself with this year’s Christmas decorations now’s the time to start planning. After all, what else have you got going on since the dreadful heat is making outdoor activities a sweat-soaked misery? Take some inspiration from [Tim] who just finished prototyping a wireless MIDI controller for his strings of Christmas lights. You can just see the four spools in the distance which are lighting up as he tickles the ivories.

The wireless link is provided by a WiFi access point which uses its USB port to control the external hardware. This is a USB Bit Whacker board which in turn drives a relay board that was designed to switch mains voltages. The high voltage parts of the rig are housed in a plastic food storage container which hosts two pair of outlets to drive four channels in total. [Tim] is happy with the outcome, which he shows off in the video after the break, and hopes to expand to a total of sixteen channels for this year’s festivities.

Continue reading “Christmas Prep Starts Early: MIDI Control For Strings Of Lights” →

Automatic Capacitor Charger Lets You Have Fun With Sparks

May 22, 2012 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

[GranTotem] is delighted by the sparks put out when a capacitor is rapidly discharged. But he’s not impressed at the relatively slow process of connecting them to a power supply for a recharge. So he built this auto-charging station for his capacitors that provides a shockingly good time almost continuously. Check out the video to see what we mean.

We always like to see the guts of the project, and that’s why we chose this image for the feature. But when everything is properly seated in the project box [GranTotem] has managed to achieve a really clean look. There are two barrel jack connectors on the end, one for 16V and the other for 20V inputs. The lid of the enclosure hosts an on/off switch, adjustment knob, and two banana connector terminals. Once switched on, a relay connects and disconnects the capacitor from the power supply at regular intervals which are adjusted by the knob. Just connect a couple of probes to those banana terminals and let the sparks reign down.

Continue reading “Automatic Capacitor Charger Lets You Have Fun With Sparks” →

Arduino Compatible Home Automation For Smart Phone Or Voice Control

May 14, 2012 by Mike Szczys 2 Comments

[Joseph] wrote in to share this home automation system he’s working on as a college project. He calls it the Room Engine and the house-side of the hardware is built on top of the circuit you see here. This is the most basic part of the REBoard, which is meant to connect to a computer uses RS232 or USB, and in turn use a set of relays to switch mains voltage devices.

You can follow the bread crumb on his webpage to get a broader video of the system. The interface is designed to use two parts. One is a voice recognition system that is supported by the computer. The other is an iOS interface that includes login credentials and a button-based control system. The video after the break shows off the smart phone portion of the controller. We think he’s done a good job of integrating a few appliances without the need for commercial products such as X10 modules.

If you’re just interested in switching a few things without cord’s reach of each other this can get it done, and offers scheduling functionality. It would also be pretty easy to set this up with a WiFi module and do away with the PC.

Continue reading “Arduino Compatible Home Automation For Smart Phone Or Voice Control” →

A Much Easier Take On An Android Garage Door Opener

May 10, 2012 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

[Andy] is taking the complexity of a smartphone-controlled garage door down a notch with this project. He’s not interested in checking on the state of the door (open or closed) using a video feed, or in controlling the thing from anywhere in the world. He just wants to use his Android as the remote control and we say amen to that.

The circuitry in the garage is pretty simple. A relay is used to simulate a button press on the in-garage wired opener. This relay is driven by an Arduino which uses a Bluetooth shield for connectivity. Since his Android phone has a Bluetooth modem the rest of the project is just app development. As you can see in the video, the app automatically connects to the Arduino when it is launched, then waits for the button press to send the electronic equivalent of ‘Open Sesame”.

The project covers a series of posts so if you want to see how he got the app up and running make sure to browse through his archives. The next iteration for this app needs to be a background widget that enables Bluetooth, connects to the Arduino, and send s the open command all with one press.

Continue reading “A Much Easier Take On An Android Garage Door Opener” →

Turning A Light Off Over The Internet

May 3, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 23 Comments

Because reaching over a few feet to turn off a switch is too much to bear for [Bruce], he connected his desk lamp to the Internet. It’s a pretty cool build that’s the perfect tutorial for connecting just about anything to the internet.

For his build, [Bruce] used an Arduino with a relay attached to an output pin. When the Arduino receives a signal on its serial port, a tiny voltage is applied to the relay, turning on the light.

This could have been done with an Arduino Ethernet, but the PHP script [Bruce] went with is a little more versatile. Whenever someone pulls up this digital light switch web page, they can turn [Bruce]’s desk lamp on and off.

For an introduction to connecting bare bones projects to the Internet, we’re really liking [Bruce]’s build. Just try no to go crazy with that link and leave the failure testing to the professionals. You can check out the demo video after the break.

Continue reading “Turning A Light Off Over The Internet” →

Simple Tweak Alerts You When You’ve Left Your Headlights On

April 11, 2012 by Mike Nathan 47 Comments

landrover-headlight-buzzer

[Paul McGuinness] owns a Series III Land Rover, and as the vehicle as formerly used by the British military, it’s lacking some of the modern amenities he was accustomed to. Overlooking the lack of power steering and all-around drum brakes, the one item that [Paul] really missed was a buzzer that let him know when he left the lights running.

On more than one occasion, he’s had to have “The Sarge” jump started after leaving the lights running all day. Explaining the humiliation involved with jump-starting a Land Rover with a Nissan Micra (an unfortunate excuse for a vehicle, known here in the states as the Nissan Versa) in his blog, [Paul] decided that he’d had enough – it was time to build a headlight warning buzzer.

The circuit itself is straightforward, consisting of a normally closed relay connected to his headlights and ignition, along with a buzzer. When the key is in the ignition and the lights are on, the relay is open and the buzzer is silent. However, if the lights are on and the relay is not supplied power from the ignition, it closes and sounds the alarm.

A simple fix for a frustrating problem – we like that.