HouseBot

I'm starting to play around with some 12v LED lighting, and am considering using central relays to control it. I find stuff like this-
http://www.ebay.com/itm/371252564401?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT

and

http://www.ebay.com/itm/121745192328?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT

on ebay for very reasonable prices. Has anyone interfaced stuff like this to HB over USB or LAN?

Amazing what you can buy for just 10$.
Not interfaced those units and not sure how to interface to USB unless it holds an FTDI chip. The LAN module should be easy to interface with.

The USB one is an STM8 micro controller (cheaper than FTDI, probably). Already found a youtube where someone didn't like the code on it and replaced it with their own cpu.

LAN is a little more expensive, but also gives much more flexibility. How would you issue the commands? Only thing I have come up with so far would be in a script with XMLHTTP and maybe a POST command.. is there something easier?

Here is a USB with FTDI...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/252146518381?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT

In-between in pricing. How would you drive that one?

Thanks!

Markd

Hi Mark,

Interesting to see a USB controlled relay - and it's something which could be useful for many automation tasks.

For controlling LEDs, isn't it a bit primitive? that might sound blunt, but it only has two states: On and Off.

I'm currently playing around with LED strips myself, and it's amazing what is out there in terms of RGB, WRGB and the NeoPixel solutions. I'm currently working on a solution using NeoPixels and driving them with an Arduino. There are some good libraries that fade, cycle, chase - all as subtle or unsubtle as you wish. Tons of pre-made solutions and examples out there to use and adapt.

I'm working on the creation of "scenes" - for ambient lighting. Currently I'm looking to smoothly transition from one scene to another, based on headlights, doors, and ignition settings (campervan). This will then be controlled directly through the Arduino IO and by Housebot through a simple serial port command. The other big advantage for myself is the reduction in wiring - 3 wires which you can chain and still address separately.

Thinking aloud, if anyone came up with a nice Arduino ethernet/Xbee plugin (instead of USB/Serial), the arduinos could be nicely distributed around the house.

A part of me would be interested to see development of a relay board solution! - but for LEDs, I think there are more elegant solutions.

Cheers,

Tony

Dimming would be nice, other than that, I don't really need a bunch of other stuff. Housebot will do all the complex controls, I just want to get away from having a powerline control shut on/off a 12v brick for each string of lights that I may have. I'm not planning on replacing all the other lighting in my house, so whatever it is will need to integrate with HB.

My thinking was that it would be simpler to have a couple of large 12v supplies in central locations with relay control of the individual strands. Then I can use whatever I want to trigger the lights on (motion, buttons, state, etc). I can even manage the 12v supply and shut it completely off if there are no LEDs on to get rid of that power drain.

Tough to beat the pricepoint too. I can always upgrade to more sophistication later if it is warranted- not like I'll have much money invested.

Oh- one more thing- these are very bright strings- not ambient, but full on light. 3 ft is ~1.4A, and enough to illuminate a closet. 6' on the top of the lightbridge over our bed aimed at the ceiling- indirect, is enough to read by on the bed and lights the whole room.

And the last edit They are high CRI natural white so that the clothes you pick out of the closet really are the colors you think they are.

Hi Mark, Sounds fair enough!

Oh- one more thing- these are very bright strings- not ambient, but full on light. 3 ft is ~1.4A, and enough to illuminate a closet. 6' on the top of the lightbridge over our bed aimed at the ceiling- indirect, is enough to read by on the bed and lights the whole room.

I'm using the Neopixels for ambient, but you can go from 30 to 60, all the way to 144RGB LEDS per meter - thats 35w (7 Amps at 5 Volts).

And the last edit They are high CRI natural white so that the clothes you pick out of the closet really are the colors you think they are.

Useful!!

I shall watch with interest. Wish I could help on the software side - but it really isn't my forte.

Hi Tony-

I looked for Neopixels HW but didn't really see any kind of controls- just lots of smaller "chunks" of LEDs, mostly RGB. Do they make any kind of a PWM controller?

Thanks

markd

FTDI is just your basic rs232 via USB. So you can use the Generic Serial device for that without any problems.

As for LAN, it depends on what the commands look like. Below is a simple example of how I control my IP Power through LAN.

markd wrote:The USB one is an STM8 micro controller (cheaper than FTDI, probably). Already found a youtube where someone didn't like the code on it and replaced it with their own cpu.

LAN is a little more expensive, but also gives much more flexibility. How would you issue the commands? Only thing I have come up with so far would be in a script with XMLHTTP and maybe a POST command.. is there something easier?

Here is a USB with FTDI...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/252146518381?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT

In-between in pricing. How would you drive that one?

Thanks!

Markd

Thanks guys. Of course I'm all hung up now- looking for ways to get better control (dimming, mostly). May end up doing something custom... I found some low cost PWM dimmers with external pots... thinking I can easily replace the pot with a digital one over I2C, then I see SW from FTDI to run I2C out of their chips. In the short term I'll probably just do X10 to shut off the whole supply.

I'm late to this thread but I thought I'd contribute what I'm using:

RGB light strips from PartsExpress similar to this:
http://www.parts-express.com/lavolta-ki ... a--073-086

Just taught all the remote's IR commands to an existing USBUIRT. It was a little fiddly at first, as the IR sequences are apparently timing sensitive. So some commands must be sent twice. But overall its ~95% reliable.

Crude but pretty effective, an no other hardware (relay boards) required. And with the above you can dim and define and save custom color mixes. etc.

Interesting... I suppose I could hack something like this by breaking apart the three channels (my LEDS are single color).

Thanks!

Markd