2008-12-30

Touch Lighting Controller

This was created for my nephew, Mark W, as a component of his year 12 high school design project. He wanted mood lighting for a Four Poster Bed.


Touch Sensors
The Capacitive Touch Sensor is similar to this circuit. To simplify the electronics I used the AVR to generate the 20kHz signal and a simplified transistor circuit.

PIR Sensors
The PIR Motion Sensors was bought from JayCar and stripped down and hacked.

RF Remote Control
The reading lights on the bed are 240v halogen lamps and I didn't want to be responsible for electrocuting someone so these are controlled using RF Power Switch devices. The remote control unit was re-wired and is now controlled by the AVR micro.


White LEDs
The bed has 12 White LEDs around the base. These provide mood lighting and turn on and off via touch sensors and PIR motion sensors. They are controlled by the AVR micro and are pulse width modulated to provide dimming.

AVR Micro
The central controller was built using an old AVR 2313 micro (superseded by the AtTiny2313).


1 comment:

  1. Wow! very very cool project. Is the AVR MICRO like an arduino? I am still learning how to seperate myself from the Arduino.

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