Archive for March, 2011

Remote controlled, dimmable LED Lamp

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

My most recent project: A remote controlled living room lamp.

I wanted something to replace the 300 watt halogen I use in my living room, and thought it would be awesome to make it dimmable, efficient, and remote controlled.  This is the result.

It was done using a Parallax Propeller chip to control a TLC5940 LED driver, and is one of my first “fully complete” projects.

The circuit was designed in DipTrace.  The PCB was cut with my CNC machine using isolation routing paths output from DipTrace.  As coded, it can be controlled using the volume and channel buttons on any universal remote set to emit Sony TV codes.

The LED driver was written in assembly by me.  The Sony IR receiver was written by Jon McPhalen.

For physical construction, the shade is made of a 4′ x 2′ sheet of thin HDPE, the ends are garbage cans from Target, the central column is 1″ PVC from Home Depot, and the “caps” are custom routed 1/2″ UHMW plastic.

It’s brighter than a 100 watt light bulb (probably closer to 150), but only uses 24 watts at full brightness.

Original project post at the Parallax Forums (includes source & schematics):
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?130673-Remote-Controlled-dimmable-LED-Lamp

Pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?ai…2&l=4320ebfe4f

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8H9-FBXlFY