Category Archives: Showcase Lighting

Pictures of the Showcase Lighting

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Finally, some pictures and a video clip.

The main PCB:

    

The touch PCB:

   

Completed:

Function video clip:

Category: Showcase Lighting

The Control Unit

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The circuit of the control unit for my showcase lighting is very simple. The core is the microcontroller MSP430G2553. A linear voltage regulator generates the required 3.3 V. The board has 2 connections for LED strips that are driven by a MOSFET. The brightness information is passed on to the ADC of the controller with a photoresistor and is evaluated there. Most I/O of the controller are required for the 5 capacitive touch fields and the feedback LEDs.

Dimming is done by PWM.

Assignment of the 5 touch fields:

  • Cap_Middle: Manual lighting on/off (1s touched), reset of settings (2s touched), saving of settings (3s touched); The feedback is via the surrounding LEDs
  • Cap_Up: Brighter
  • Cap_Down: Darker
  • Cap_Right: Upper turn-on threshold; A touch will take the current brightness
  • Cap_Left: Lower turn-on threshold; A touch will take the current brightness

 

    

Pictures of the Showcase Lighting

Category: Showcase Lighting

Concept of Showcase Lighting

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I would like to have a solution for my showcase lighting which is small, simple, inconspicuous, but chic.

There are 2 showcases to be illuminated. LED strips are already installed in the showcases, once 2 and once 3. The strips are operated with 12V. The power is about 3Wmax per strip. For 5 strips, this is 1.25 A, which is not to much. In addition, this is much too bright and will probably be operated mostly dimmed.

Power supply is a 12 V plug-in power supply. To build something by myself is not necessary.

Since I like to try other things, I did not take an Arduino, but a TI MC of the type MSP430G2553. For development, I got the  launchpad MSP-EXP430G2 , which already brings the programming interface for programming my own board later. At the same time I didn’t want any buttons and found the idea of ​​capacitive switch fields very elegant. The MSP430 Capacitive Touch BoosterPack is compatible with the Launchpad.

There are Code Composer Studio builds for  Windows, MacOS and Linux,  however, the MSP-EXP430G2 is not supported in MacOS, so I had to take the Windows version🙁.

The Control Unit

Category: Showcase Lighting

Automatic Showcase Lighting

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Perhaps you know this too: You have finally decided for a new living room furniture and maybe this includes also a glass showcase. If that would be illuminated … (I know, this is old-fashioned (or a matter of taste)). 
Something like this is well-known for a long time. Problem with this: with normal incandescent light it is expensive and if you have to switch on the lighting manually, you will not do it anyway. 
Today, LED strips are used. A problem remains: manual switch-on is uncomfortable. 
I faced this problem a while ago. 
The available automatics were expensive and / or crap and did not what I wanted anyway. 
I don’t want to have to worry about this lighting again after I first switched it on, if I don’t want to.

The following characteristics are important to me:

  • Lighting dimmable
  • Lighting is off when it is bright outside
  • Lighting is off when it is night and the room is dark
  • The thresholds for switching on and off are adjustable
  • I can save the settings (optional)

 

The next contributions show how I solved the challenge.

Concept of Showcase Lighting

Category: Showcase Lighting
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