Description
The AC Dimmer is designed to control the alternating current voltage, which can transfer current up to 600V/16. In most cases, Dimmer is used to turn power ON/OFF for lamps or heating element, it can also be used in fans, pumps, air cleaners, e.t.c.
Lately, Dimmer has become an often used decision for the smart home systems. For example, when you need to smoothly change the light brightness. The lamp is slowly turning ON or OFF, creating a comfortable atmosphere. Dimmer works most effective with filament lamps. It’s less stable with low brightness dimmable LED lamps, but with moderate and high brightness it will perform a solid job. Note that luminescent lamps (gas discharge lamps) do not support dimming.
Power part of dimmer is isolated from the control part, to exclude the possibility of high current disruption to a microcontroller.
The logical level is tolerant to 5V and 3.3V, therefore it can be connected to the microcontroller with 5V and 3.3V levellogic.
In ARDUIN0, dimmer is controlled with RBDdimmer.h library, which uses external interrupts and process time interrupts. It simplifies the code writing and gives more processing time for main code. Which is why you can control multiple Dimmers from one microcontroller.
You can download RBDDimmer.h library and a few examples in Documents or on GitHub. We are constantly updating our library, so we recommend to check for the website updates or subscribe to our newsletter.
Dimmer is connected to ARDUIN0 controllers via two digital pins. First (Zero) to control the passing of Phase Null of AC, which is used to initiate the interrupt signal. Second (DIM/PSM) to control (dim) current.
Note that Zero requires connection to designated microcontroller pins (which are different depending on the model of UnoNano, Leonardo, Mega), since it tied to microcontroller interrupts.
Theory
Dimming can be achieved by Pulse Skip Modulation
Method 1 ― One or more cycles (sine wave signal) are transferred to the load, while following one or several cycles are blocked.
Method 2 ― Partial transferrence of each sine wave to the load.
Method 3 ― Generation of modulated full sine signal of different frequency up to few hundred hertz. This method requires specialized powerfull AC generators with different modulation.
Methods 1 and 2 are the easiest to execute with the help of a Dimmer and programm code:in both cases, there is a need of circuit that detects the zero crossing and can control a triac.
Specification
Power:600V – 16A
AC frequency:50/60 Hz
TRIAC:BTA16 – 600B
Isolation:Optocoupler
Logiclevel:3.3V/5V
Zero point:Logiclevel
Modulation (PWM with trigger):logiclevel ON/OFF TRIAC
Signal current:>10mA
Environment:For indoor and outdoor use
Operating temperatures:-20C to 80C
Operating humidity:Dry environment only
ROHS3:Compliant
Package included
1 x AC Light Dimmer Module
Additional information
| Weight | 0.02 kg |
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