[Vadpol]

Hi Michael,

Finally I did a very straight forward solution for IR remote control of Lumazoid – just organized the IR part with additional ATTiny85 processor and TSOP4838 IR sensor. Two pins of ATTiny are programmed in a way to simulate buttons operation (HIGH/LOW state upon receiving of the certain code from IR control, fully programmable) and could be connected in parallel to original hardware buttons. There is a lot of such a code examples available, so quite easy to adapt for any type of remote control. Perhaps it doesn’t work for the setup tuning as soon as the knobs will not work with IR in this case (however it also could be programmed with other pins of ATTiny). However it is good enough to switch in between patterns and colors on the fly. This fully solved my problem as I have LED strip and Lumazoid PCB installed behind the ceiling canopy in the room. I also added an additional pattern of just warm white light (dimmable with the same buttons) which is used for conventional lighting scene in the room. This made a custom oriented solution in my case. Here is my IR pcb variant where OUT1 and OUT2 are PATTERN and COLOR button connections at main pcb.

Thanks again for your great initial design!

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by Michael. Reason: trying to fix image link
• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by Michael. Reason: trying to fix image link

[Vadpol]

Hi Michael,

First of all – all the best in the New 2017 Year! Merry XMas and Happy New Year! Sorry for being silent for a while, but in the meantime I’ve managed to make a through hole PCB design by using just of standard mockup type of it, no customs made yet. Therefore I made some electrical connections just by thin wires at its backside. Also I used LM386 preamp and put IR sensor TSOP3848 connected to D6 digital pin of AtMega328PU chip for the future developments (still think about it). Everything I put in the small plastic box with two potentiometeres and two buttons in front and two parallel LED outputs and audio in and out jacks at the rear. It works very good! The device started to be much more sound sensitive, also it has a small built-in electret mic with separate amplifier which is automatically connected to audio input when there is no plugged in audio signal. This makes it wireless from audio source and much more mobile therefore. I could send the pictures and video to your mail address if you want to. You’ve made a very good initial design, this is just an improvement and it works very fine!

As for remote IR – I was thinking about processor load and came to conclusion that it is still might be possible to implement I believe. It could be just one additional check on the IR signal presence in the main loop which will not consume a lot of resource, the smallest size simple IR lib is still needed though. In case the received IR code matches the prescribed one (only pattern change is needed so far I think) just another small subroutine (void) should be there to select the pattern in a button push cycle – almost the same as in pattern button case. As soon as there is no IR signal checked the main loop should work as it is. This small check should not overload the main processor from real time FFT calculation. It could be easily checked I think. Hope that it might be interesting for you. Many thanks!

[Vadpol]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your quick response! I like what you are doing, that’s something I was always interested! I do realize the issue of real time calculations if capacity is limited… There are two ways to solve it I believe – to increase capacity (i.e. using of the more powerful processor – ARM Cortex core based f.i. or to make part of the calculations – FFT analysis – by hardware, a small MSGEQ7 chip could do it). But both will require more investment of course which is not in line with your initial intention, right? However every product has its consumer, maybe this is something for the future development 🙂
Also in order to increase sensitivity the good idea might be to use a simple circuit based on cheap LM386 amplifier at the input of existing schematics after stereo signal joint. This will make the device more sensitive to the line input and – the most important – to the mic module you’ve indicated somewhere already. This will eliminate the necessity of wire connection and thus give a flexibility in installation at any corner of the room. If you are not against I will try to make a prototype of this based on your initial design and share the result with you. I hope that it might make the usage of the device more convenient as well – just trying to make it more customer friendly 🙂

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