Lightbox Project

Question

Hello,

I am an artist and a newbie who has created one previous arduino project with a motion sensor, breadboard, and single led.

I am now building four to six metal light boxes which I want to have a med/slow light fade up to full when motion is detected and fade down to off after two minutes or so with no motion. I want each box to react individually and plan to use one motion detector for each.

I plan to use an Arduino (Uno or Mega?) white led strip lights (not sure if they must be individually addressable pixel strips or?), pir (or other?) motion sensors, and AtTiny (85?) microprocessors to accomplish this effect. I would love any advice on this plan and ways to accomplish this effect. Ideally the motion sensors would not need to be connected to the lights and could be wireless perhaps using RF transmitters/receivers?

I have found several tutorials but am not sure how effective they are until testing. I can post these for inspection, and would greatly appreciate any advice. I have also found some arduino codes online which I have not tested yet, but can post. I am hoping to keep any wires very minimal/subtle because this will be displayed in a fine art museum. I hope to troubleshoot as much as possible before ordering to minimize cost and error.

Thanks in advance for any/all advice!!

Leslie

shabaz · Answer

For museum-quality fading effects, consider plugging an Infineon LED Shield Infineon LED Shield on top of the Arduino. The Shield can be used for three channels of lights, but you could just use one channel, or connect all three to white lights. Probably you want individual LED modules, so you can space them accordingly, and positioned about 10 cm back from your translucent panel (anyway this is just a guess, you may need to experiment). You can send I2C commands from the Arduino to the LED Shield to control brightness, fading etc. You didn't give enough information, perhaps through-hole LEDs like these through-hole LEDs like these are easily solderable to a stripboard to be mounted in your box .About 12 of these (all soldered in series) per channel would work, so a total of 36 of them driven from a single Shield, powered from a 48V DC supply. For wireless control I don't know of anything specifically for the Arduino that is easy to use - perhaps others have suggestions. EDIT: See: RGB LED Shield from Infineon - Getting Started Guide the first bit shows how to get a basic program running with the Arduino and the LED Shield, there is an I2C setting that controls how much current is driven through the LEDs, it would need setting to suit your particular LEDs (see 'Adjusting the Desired Current' section there).

Lightbox Project

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