Help with a project. Blink LED circuit...

Wireless remote, RFID and Arduino

(This first post is outdated, but does give some background of my project idea)

Hello everyone.

I'm new here, and have a moderate background in electronics. I have built kits and small circuits, and do work on my stand up Video Arcade games (re-capping and such). I'm not knowledgeable to create circuits from scratch however. So hopefully I can enlist some help from the members.

First off, I can not tell you exactly what I am going to use the required circuit for. I can tell you it is nothing illegal, immoral or unethical. Check out my profile and there is a hint as to what I might be involved in. However, I am bound by a code not to discuss any issues with the "uninitiated". I hope you under stand this situation.

So here is what I have and what I need to do. And in my case, size does matter. Smaller is better.

I have a 120v remote controlled outlet switch. (store bought) I will be making modifications to this and repackaging the device.

What I need is a circuit that works off 120v AC. This circuit needs to do one thing, and only one thing at this point (with possible features added down the road-timer on/off?), it needs to turn ON an LED. This LED needs some flexibility as to size, brightness and color, as I do not currently know what will work best. That's it. An LED that turns on/off.

I see it either as a circuit that plugs into the 120v AC and runs from line voltage or as a circuit that uses the 120v AC to activate a relay and fire a switch on the LED circuit that is running on AA or AAA batteries (or maybe a coin cell or watch battery). I could also perhaps HACK the remote outlet, by converting the outlet to DC battery power and trigger the LED from there. I have no idea if that is possible.

Anyone out there that can help I would love to talk about this in public or private.

Thanks in advance,
-David

Hello David,

Welcome to the forum.

You might check into devices that use the X10 protocol. Radio Shack carries some of these devices that do different things. They also have timers. They plug directly into the AC wall outlet and communciate using the house wiring. I have done one project with them, so I can't vouch for their reliabiliy. But it's worth a look. Take care.

Help with a project. Expanded ideas - Arduino.

Hello Rezer,

Hey thanks for the reply. I have seen those X-10 devices, they sound interesting.

As for my first message for help. The remote outlet gizmo is just a very basic idea, a feet in the water kind of thing. Sort of like when I built my first MAME cabinet inside my Space Gun arcade game (**broken link removed**), it just lead to more stuff down the road. The outlet gizmo came about because I have one I bought for my 84 year old mother's house, but we never used. I'm going to hack something together over the weekend, but it is really the tip of iceberg as to where I want to go.

About 2 years back I did a lot of looking at the Arduino units, but never took the plunge. However, the ideas I wish to work on now are perfect for that unit and I am pretty sure that some to the "products" which are sold by dealers today for big dollars ($1000 - $5000+) may very well be based on the Arduino since it is off the shelf stuff.

I would love to find some folks knowledgeable enough to help with my prototypes. There are several directions that I want to go, but I want to start simple.

Again, I am not going to say the purpose of the device in an open forum, but I can discuss it more in private email or PMs.

Going down this more complex road, I have some basic questions about the possibility of certain hardware working for my purposes. With this in mind the basic layout of the first idea is basically as follows.

In the remote scenario, the Arduino is at the receiver end of the chain.

This device http://rentron.com/Linx/HHLR.htm is the transmitter end of the chain. The Linx CMD-HHLR-433 "Long-Range" RF Transmitter requires this receiver http://www.rentron.com/remote_control/RXLC-434LR.htm and this decoder http://www.rentron.com/remote_control/Holtek.htm#648

So my first big question is can the Arduino be interfaced to this transmitter and receiver combo? Also of note is that I do not need the range listed for this transmitter, which is '1000. I would never be that far from the receiver, so perhaps there are other units like this on that would also work. This transmitter just happens to look nearly identical to a unit sold by dealers in my market, for the purpose I am working towards.

Back at the receiver end, one possible use would have all the electronics in a package about the size of a deck of playing cards. It will have some sort of LCD display, which needs to only be one line of data, with 8-10 characters, able to display alpha and numeric characters.

The Arduino would have some programming code that will parse the button presses from the remote into the required data stream and send it to the display.

This is a very basic blueprint for the device. There are many other possible options and configurations, but this is the first one I'd like to work on.

Can anyone comment on interfacing the Arduino to the above mentioned transmitter and receiver?

Thanks and I look forward to discussing this further.

-David

Arduino and RFID

An additional function of this device will be the ability to read RFID tags. I have just started to research the Arduino and RFID tag reading. There is a little info out there, but I'd sure like to hear from folks who may have done this type of circuit with an Arduino. I'll post links to some of the parts I have looked into and perhaps someone can comment on the issues with these parts.

Thanks again.
-David

Bump

Anyone have a comment? Guess I better find an Arduino forum as my questions are more Arduino information based.

TIA,
-David:

**broken link removed**

Ken