A Remotely Programable Relay Controller (Christmas Lights or Home Automation Controller)

Step 9 Conclusion and next steps

There you have it - an extremely useful little board.

With 20 program steps available and delay timers of up to 65000 seconds (a little over 18 hours), there are almost limitless possibilities to what the board can do...

And - finally, with great power comes great responsibility (tm) - You will have noticed that there was no login option - there is no security - don't connect this to the big bad Internet and expect people to not fiddle.  The board does not understand routing anyway, so you would need to NAT any connection from the board.

Also - it is possible to setup state 0 - turning off all relays - and jumping to state 0 - Guess what that does???  Yep - nothing - again and again and again - but that was what you typed in :-)  But - remember , you can always type in a new program.

Where to next?  Well - I am glad that you asked that - I have a couple of other jobs to do around the house (an my mother in laws house as well) - but when they are finished, I will be providing an input module - that should extend the project to provide Programmable Logic Controller functionality - such as - If Input 3 is on, and 4 seconds have passed, dont go to step 5, go to step 9 instead.  There is a 4 pin expansion connector in the middle of the board fo that capability to be just plugged in....  Given time we shall see.

I hope you enjoy building and using it as much as I enjoyed designing it.

Finally, if you really want a kit for the project - or completed boards, send me a message - I will see what level of popularity the project has and will provide kits if there is sufficient interest.

Comments

[amazing1]

I think this is one of the coolest projects I have seen yet and I really want to try it. Although I might try something a little different. I know that they sell remote controlled wall electrical outlets. And You could easily interface with the wireless remote so the you could have web controlled wireless electrical outlets. so you could have a base station at your computer and have the controlled electrical outlets do as you say wirelessly for the web. so if you left a light on you could hop on a computer and turn that light off. Very nice, thank you for being so detailed in your instructable. And if you did make a kit I would probably buy one depending on how much they are.

[drj113]

Thanks for your comment - I enjoyed designing it.

I love the idea of using remote controlled outlets - you could use this design, and hack the relay output across the control button... that would work.