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Lighting Control Assistance
Hello,
I was wondering if someone could recommend a way to control 3 – 120-volt, 100-watt light bulbs. The light bulbs need to come on one at a time for one second at a time. This process needs to happen continuously 24/7/365.
It is a simple process but the only thing that I have come up with so far is building a board with a controller and 3 – relays. That is about $100.00 worth of material and a couple hours of labor. I would like to do this project with less labor given the fact that there are 70 – of these to build.
Thank you so much for the Help.
Jim
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3 Replies
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3 Ideas:
Build it with an Arduino board and some relays, Arduinos are $30, their programming langage is open-source and the code you need is likely already written and posted for free.
Or an old school 555 IC timing chip and $10 in Radio Shack parts will make a “Larson scanner”, the output of which can be sent to high-power relays.
Or use a DMX controller from a Dj supply place to make lights “chase”?
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Hey Mark,
Thanks for the friendly advice sir.
Will any of these set ups be robust enough to run 24/7/365? Each of the 3 – light bulbs are pulling 100-watts at 120-volts.Best To All,
Jim -
The circuit boards run on a 5 to 9-volt power supply, batteries or a wall wart transformer. The relays will have to be purpose-bought from an electrical contractor type store. They can switch house current, though the tripping signal to the relay may be very small. x-10 type relays are available online and maybe from radio shack as well: I don’t know what their rated cycle life is though. I would see if you can hire an electrical engineer or ham radio expert to solder one up for you to test. It might help to know what the final product/effect actually is. Are you making fake traffic lights or something as displays?
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