pref home next
day 0, the idea


global plan
The idea is to control lights and stuff easily with the help of a computer..
At first there have to be buttons which can operate without the computer. And I do want monitoring.
So I just let a monitoring line go back into the computer which keeps track of the status of the switches.
If I want a light to turn on at a specific moment and the light is already on,.
The computer has to be able to turn the light off after I turned it on manually. I can do that either by a hotel switch, or I use a toggle button, so that either I or the computer can toggle :)

block schematic



how to toggle
The toggle principle seems to me the most fun one. There are 2 options here.
One is the use of transistors and the other of flipflops in toggle state :)
I think I'l use both, but first it will be the transistor one. I'll need 3 transistors and 6 resistors to solve it.



see the prototype here:

The drawback to this one is that it's time dependent, that means, if I push the button too long, it will go back into his off state. So I will not use this one.

I am going to use a device who just flips at the moment the voltage drops a certain level, no matter how long the puls takes
This immediatly leads to flip flops gates, The base part of which all memory chips are built. it consists of logic components, but it is more difficult approach.
The schematic:

The protoype:


This one worked better. Now lets go on to step 2..

home next