Hippogriff
Member
Tied in with a previous thread I created...
I am creating a RGB LED strip wall wash / accent lighting thingie... when it starts off I have just added a slow fade from R, G and B all being off and fading up to the first colour in the colour list that I fade between... this is cool because the light strip turns on very gradually and not abruptly.
In a perfect world, I would like this to be connected to the mains power all the time and for the user to not have to worry about physically switching it on, but for it to come on either when it is a) a certain time or - maybe - b) when the ambient light falls below a certain level. Ideally, it would automatically come at at 18:00 and automatically go off at 23:00.
Concentrating on the first one, time... this would be easy to do by putting one of those mains timer things between the plug and the socket, simple and it would work a treat. However, is there also a way of doing this via something I could plug(!) into my PIC, so it knows the time? A component? And then it knows to turn on, or it provides power to the PIC at the right time or whatever?
If it is a component that is on all the time and also my PIC is powered too, then thinking "green", this might not be the way people would recommend I go these days, as I guess the circuit is on and is consuming power 24-7, but is it possible and, assuming it is, what kind of kit would I need? Also, I wonder if this is a programming task too... would my JAL code need a tight loop to check the time and then start up when the time is reached?
A lot easier on a computer, with its inbuilt time, isn't it?
I am creating a RGB LED strip wall wash / accent lighting thingie... when it starts off I have just added a slow fade from R, G and B all being off and fading up to the first colour in the colour list that I fade between... this is cool because the light strip turns on very gradually and not abruptly.
In a perfect world, I would like this to be connected to the mains power all the time and for the user to not have to worry about physically switching it on, but for it to come on either when it is a) a certain time or - maybe - b) when the ambient light falls below a certain level. Ideally, it would automatically come at at 18:00 and automatically go off at 23:00.
Concentrating on the first one, time... this would be easy to do by putting one of those mains timer things between the plug and the socket, simple and it would work a treat. However, is there also a way of doing this via something I could plug(!) into my PIC, so it knows the time? A component? And then it knows to turn on, or it provides power to the PIC at the right time or whatever?
If it is a component that is on all the time and also my PIC is powered too, then thinking "green", this might not be the way people would recommend I go these days, as I guess the circuit is on and is consuming power 24-7, but is it possible and, assuming it is, what kind of kit would I need? Also, I wonder if this is a programming task too... would my JAL code need a tight loop to check the time and then start up when the time is reached?
A lot easier on a computer, with its inbuilt time, isn't it?