Motion Activated Lamps

A control box and outlets that turn several living room lamps on if it is dark outside and there is motion in the room

The Story Behind the Project

This project came about because the living room of our house has no ceiling lights, so my roommates and I bought several lamps for the living room. However, it's tedious to go around the room turning all of them on and off each time you enter and exit the room. I thought it would be convenient to be able to switch them all on/off with one switch, or even better, not have to touch a switch at all for normal use.

Features

• Uses two motion sensors together: a Passive Infrared Sensor and an RCWL-0516 radio doppler sensor. Together, they detect motion more accurately

• A timeout dial sets how long until the lights should be turned off if there is no motion

• A brightness threshold dial sets how dark it has to be outside for the lights to enable

• The main knob sets whether the lights should be all on, off, or motion activated

• Outlet boxes have radio chips in them, and can be placed anywhere in the room while wirelessly receiving on/off commands from the control box. In this way, an arbitrarily high number of lights can be simultaniously wirelessly controlled.