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Light Controller or rather Electrical Outlet Controller

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mammanoti

New Member
This is the situation:
I have been 'collecting' controllers from christmas lights, some the sequence and others the do that and fades in/out. Up until now I would just wire the controller to the plugs and thus have 4 individual flashing/fading strings. The problem arrises when I add a third string of lights to a 'channel' it overloads the circuit and then the ending result is a steady on (and a very warm controller).

The plan: :idea:
I want to wire the controllers inside a box of portable outlets instead. After searching the net I found www.christmascave.com. This guys uses SSRs to do this. This works very well for sequencers, but doesn't work for fading effects. I think SCRs would work but I am not sure. I want to be able to just plug in 'whatever I want' to control.

If you have ideas or schematics (120v in America) I would appreciate.

Note: Yeah I know it can be done with a Micro, but I haven't gone there yet. :lol:
 
Phase Control method for SCRs/Triac can be used for fading effect. There are many uC based circuits lying around for Triac Phase control. Phase control basicaly controls the magnitude of voltage applied to the load.
 
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