Well the testing did not went according to plan but I was expecting that. The main problem is because I was planning to use LEDs for lighting up the stairs, but because of festive season they have not arrived yet. So instead of 1W LEDs I got stuck with 10W halogens. 10W might not look alot but the current it needs is ~0.8Amps where as LED would be 0.08Amps. The maximum that ULN2803A can handle on collector is 0.5Amps. So when I’ve got everything connected the lights worked half way and then the chips went dead 🙁
The solution would be to replace ULN2803A with 2x ULN2064 quad Darlington arrays as they can handle much higher currents.
I’m putting this project on hold until I get the LEDs. Hopefully it won’t be long.

Step by step I’m getting closer to setting the lights up. I’ve went to person who will be  having these setup, to check the situation with cables and how to proceed further. Everything is looking OK and we did some testing. The only problem we had is that the current setup is using AC 12V voltage source and for arduino I need DC voltage. In order to get DC voltage from AC voltage I will add diode bridge to my project.
To make things easier and nicer I’ve deciced to make a shield for my arduino. I needed to add diode bridge and Darlington Transistor Array to arduino and I did not want it to be hanging just on wires. (more…)

In this part I’ve connected the second IR sensor and Light sensor.
As you can see in the video when the light sensor is covered Arduino gives my a sign that it is night time by running Leds from one end and back.
At the moment there is a delay until the lights  starts switching off if during the delay any of the IR sensors are crossed the delay starts counting from the beginning.

While testing I’ve noticed that some Leds instead of dimming just switch off. Reading through Arduino forum I’ve found that apparently Arduino can only to analogWrite() on digital pins 3, 5, 4, 9, 10 and 11. This is what I most liekely will have to live with or maybe get myself  Arduino with ATmega.

Hi Everyone,
This post will be something different compared to the posts on this blog but it is still ralated to IT.

About a year ago I’ve found out about Arduino and really liked what can be done with it and how easy it is to use. So I’ve bought it…. Well needles to say I played around with for day or 2 and forgot about it.
Couple months ago I saw Automatic LED stair lighting posted on YouTube see the video bellow:

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