Best posts made by pjblink

Hi all,

Just wanted to show you all my motion-activated LED Porch Light. Lots of 12v LED lights on here, not so many mains AC-powered bulb projects, so I thought I'd show you mine. Sketch is a standard motion sensor interrupt sketch alongside a dimming sketch, I'm sure I got it from the forums. Initially I wanted it to perform local control of the lamp via the PIR but then decided I wanted the light to come on low (33%) from dusk till dawn, and then raise to 100% when it detects motion. Because of that I've left the control logic to Vera. Below about 30% the bulb shows an obvious unstable flicker so I don't go there! Dimming and ramp up/down is beautifully smooth.

It consists of:

Arduino Nano
NRF24L01 radio
HLK-PM01 240v AC>5v DC
HC-SR501 (PIR)
240v AC Phase control dimming circuit: http://www.ebay.com/itm/111764492631
4w dimmable filament LED bulb
Wall box with blanking plate

https://youtu.be/g7UY0zDP7zU

@sundberg84 That was definitely on the cards...but it looks like I might have got it working. I did 4 things in one go, which is unlike me, so now I have to break things down to see which one helped (if it wasn't all)...1st thing was a 4700uF cap over the arduino VIN/GND, 2nd was a 1000uF cap over the relay +- 5v,… 3rd was to reflow a few of the GND solders and finally I dropped the voltage regulator from 8v to just under 7v...and hey presto...

mysensors doorbell node working – 00:22
— Patrick Blinkhorne

So it kept failing after 2 or 3 rings...frustrating! I enabled all the debug and noticed it kept failing just before sending out the "off" message. It didn't reset, just stalled. This was the case even when powered by USB. And then I remembered how sensitive the NRFs are to fluctuations in power and I hadn't got round to putting a cap on there yet!!! I put a spare 1000uF (47uF are on order) and so far it hasnt caused me any further issues! So now I've got 3 huge capacitors on there, and it looks ok...touch wood.