Schlagwort: Light Switch

  • Turn your lights on and off by staring at this little robotic switch

    Turn your lights on and off by staring at this little robotic switch

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Unlike every other hands-free light switch that relies on infrared motion detection or changes in ambient light values, Michael Rigsby’s “Look at Me Light Switch” instead requires a person to stare at it for six seconds.

    Based on an embedded machine learning model and a microcontroller, this device uses Person Sensor from Useful Sensors, which relies on a camera to gather images, processes them, and outputs the results over I2C. This information can include the total number of faces as well as individual bounding boxes for every detected face. From here, the information sent by the Person Sensor is read by an Arduino Uno and used to determine if someone is staring at the switch.

    When the face is initially found, a small red LED starts to blink at the top to indicate that the user has been seen. Then once they have been staring for over three seconds, a servo-actuated googly eye spins around to show the action was successful and a relay is toggled to turn the light on or off via a remote control.

    As Rigsby notes, “This is not a ‘clap on, clap off’ switch from years past; this is a ‘look on, look off’ switch for the present age.” The Clapper was popular in the 1990s, so who knows, maybe his tinyML solution could be the next big thing in lighting control? To see more about this fun project, you can watch Mike’s video below and read his write-up here on Instructables.

    The post Turn your lights on and off by staring at this little robotic switch appeared first on Arduino Blog.

    Website: LINK

  • Retrofit your light switch with this remote-controlled device

    Retrofit your light switch with this remote-controlled device

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Arduino TeamDecember 23rd, 2021

    It can be extremely annoying and frustrating to finally get comfortable somewhere only to realize that you forgot to turn off a light, thus requiring a short journey to and from the wall switch. Mechanical engineering student and Instructables user alanmerritt ran into the same problem in his dorm room, so he responded by creating a device that could remotely operate a light switch without any modifications to the switch itself. 

    The first step in designing this remote control device was measuring the fixture and modeling it in CAD, after which Alan made a small rack-and-pinion mechanism that uses a servo motor to rotate a gear and thus lift an attached slider up or down. He also 3D printed an enclosure that surrounds the otherwise ugly electronics, hiding them from the view of potential visitors. 

    Commands to toggle the switch are sent from a controller that consists of an Arduino Mega and an nRF24 wireless transceiver module, and a corresponding nRF24 transceiver receives the command and passes the information to an Arduino Uno over the SPI bus. Finally, this Uno board interprets the command and moves the servo motor to their the on or off position accordingly. 

    To read about this project in more detail, including the code and design files, you can check out Alan’s write-up here on Instructables.

    Website: LINK

  • Custom “doorbell” flashes house lights for the hearing impaired

    Custom “doorbell” flashes house lights for the hearing impaired

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    Custom “doorbell” flashes house lights for the hearing impaired

    Arduino TeamSeptember 28th, 2018

    Darren Lewis’ parents both have a difficult time hearing the doorbell. He experimented with an off-the-shelf flashing light, but found that could only really be seen when they were in the room—an obvious problem. In response to this, Lewis decided to make his own system that flashes multiple house lights at the same time.

    His device uses an Arduino Nano to detect the stock doorbell speaker voltage. When a press is sensed, it then activates a RF light switch via a modified remote, using an output pin and opto-isolator to substitute in for the normal button press. 

    It’s a clever hack, and certainly one that will certainly help alleviate doorbell frustration in the future!

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC8JPW88aE0?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhI5gHsknqY?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

    Website: LINK