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Daylight harvesting is becoming increasingly important in the design and implementation of commercial lighting systems. Being able to integrate the natural light from windows with flexible, controllable sources of lighting helps improve the work environment and cut energy bills.

Being able to have closer control of the lighting systems in a commercial environment is a key element to this strategy and energy harvesting can play an important role. Being able to have flexible placement of control pads for a commercial lighting system is an important requirement as office space is regularly reconfigured as existing clients grow and change their requirements and new clients have new requirements. [Link]

A photoflash unit has a simple circuit design: a high-voltage direct current (DC) supply is connected in series with a high-resistance resistor (which we’ll call ‘R1′). This resistor limits the current flow. A capacitor ‘C’ is connected in parallel with a flash lamp. The resistance ‘R2’ of a flash lamp is of small value. The circuit contains a switch between the large resistance ‘R1’ and a small resistance flash lamp ‘R2’, such that it can connect either resistance at any time during the process. [Link]

This project is a remake of an old discolights pod. Original 24V 5W bulbs are changed to 230V 40W with E14 thread. Original driver board has non-typical signal input. This driver is based on the FT245RL chip, a USB-LPT converter – so you can use it with PC applications such as discolitez. Low voltage part is supplied directly from the USB so there is no need to to use any transformer…

Device uses a MOC3041 optotriac and a BT136 triac in a standard application to drive bulbs. Note if you want to use stronger bulbs, like 100W or more, you need to use some little radiators to cool down the triacs. There are 4 channels, 3 are used for bulbs and 4th is used as an extra 230V output – in this case for a mini strobe. You can find 4 goldpins on board, these are a 4 extra output channels – so you can expand device to another optotriacs and triacs to use 4 more 230V devices. To your own safety, use a proper fuse, and remember that device works on a 230V potential. You can use it with 110V devices instead of 230V, no problem. [Link]

I got myself some UV-curable solder mask for my PCB workshop, and as soon as i got it, i discovered that my UV artwork transfer box is totally incapable to activate the UV paint and cure it. I began searching the net for powerful UV lamps, and then it hit me: Some months ago i uploaded a theory regarding the Cold and Hot cathode discharge lamps. During my research for these lamps i found out that they can provide directly visible light (lamps without internal coating), or they produce UV radiation. The lamps that produce UV radiation have an extra coating on their internal surface which glows when excited by the UV rays, thus producing light! [Link]

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. [Link]