z kehew Issue 6 Arl-|une :pp8 enal: ataata.org.au www: htt:]]www.ata.org.

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Snart :z volt lght dnner
John Hooer deserihes his eniry inio ihe Traee C40 Ioad eoniroIIer
eomeiiiion. WhiIe a Iighi dimmer may seem a hii ass, ihis one has an
inieresiing feaiure designed io sae energy
H
any lighting circuits use light
dinners, but they rely on
the light level being set nan-
ually by the operator. A ar nore ei-
cient systen is to have the dinning
circuit neasure the anbient light level
and adjust the brightness o the lights
accordingly. This helps to naintain an
even light level in the roon, and save
energy in the process by not running
the lights unnecessarily.
The circuit I designed to acconplish
this task is described here. It has the
olloving eatures:
saves energy vhen sun the cones out
conpensates or supply voltage
variations
can control up to a 50 vatt load
high eiciency
light output is variable betveen 0 and
100 per cent
it operates ron a sae 12 volt supply
it uses less than 20 conponents,
costing around $15.
how t works
The circuit uses pulse vidth nodula-
tion to control the pover going to the
lanp. It does this by svitching it on and
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U:a
U:b
U:c
o at a rate too ast to be perceived by
the hunan eye.
The svitching is done by a pover
MCSIET, Q1. The svitching re-
quency is set to around 200Hz by the
oscillator circuit, based around L1a.
The output vaveorn o this oscillator
is alnost savtooth in shape.
Light intensity is neasured by the light
dependent resistor (LDR1), and the din-
ning level is set by the control potenti-
oneter, VR1. The desired light level and
the neasured light level are conpared and
the conparator, based around L1b, ad-
justs the pover in the lanp until they are
equal via the MCSIET driver, L1c.
Jhe autonatc dnner wll control u to o watts worth of halogen lans n order to
nantan a consstent lght level n a roon.
j0IY conetton entry]