My Circuit

This is yet another project born of necessity. It's a simple circuit, but does exactly what it's designed to do - dim LED lights or control the speed of 12V DC motors. The circuit uses PWM to regulate the effective or average current through the LED array, 12V incandescent lamp (such as a car headlight bulb) or DC motor. The only difference between the two modes of operation is the addition of a power diode for motor speed control, although a small diode should be used for dimmers too, in case long leads are used which will create an inductive back EMF when the MOSFET switches off.    Photo of Completed PWM Dimmer/Speed Control The photo shows what a completed board looks like. Dimensions are 53 x 37mm, so it's possible to install it into quite small spaces. The parts used are readily available, and many subsitiutions are available for both the MOSFET and power diode (the latter is only needed for motor speed control). The opamps should not be substituted, because the ones ...

Measure AC mains voltage without using a multimeter. All you need to do is to slightly modify the light dimmer fitted at the base of a table lamp for use as a voltmeter . When the dimmer is turned anticlockwise to a point where the filament glow is just visible, that point can be used as the reference point for measuring the voltage. Light dimmer Circuit Diagram First, remove the old knob and fix a circular white paper around the shaft. Now put back a skirted knob with a cursor as close to the paper as possible and mark two extremities of the pot on the paper as CW and ACW (see Fig. 2). AC volts scale marking Switch on the lamp via a variac and feed 50 volts. Rotate the potmeter knob anticlockwise until the filament glow is just visible and mark that point against the cursor as 50V. Keep on increasing the voltage to 100, 150, 180, 200 and 220 using the variac and calibrating the scale for all the voltages. Now a voltage scale is created. The only snag is that the voltage is increasing ...

This project was used as a wireless light dimmer, but in principle can be used to dim resistive loads and wirelessly turn on/off loads. The current code includes a routine to dim a light bulb in a “heartbeat” pattern, with the heartbeat frequency remotely adjustable. The top left of the schematic shows the wall outlet (US 120VAC) being stepped down with a small transformer, then full rectified and regulated. This powers the entire board from the wall. The top right shows a microcontroller, ATmega48, its programming header, and a UART connection to the microcontroller (for debugging). The bottom right shows the XBee and its basic voltage regulation (it’s 3.3V), as well as an LED that indicates when the XBee is connected. [ ]