Hello There!

These days battery life has become a key competing feature between mobiles, laptops, wearable devices, etc. We know that over-charging a battery leads to an effect called "battery-effect",where due to charging a devices battery past it's power limit leads to decrease in battery life. I have lost 2 phones due to this problem. There are various situations of over-charging - forgetting to switching of the charger, leaving the device on charging and going out,etc. So I decided to make a device that would help me solve the problem over-charging my devices. Hence I came upon the of my project "Particle Switch".

The Particle Switch is basically an AC circuit switching hardware. At it's heart is a Wifi enabled micro-controller which is controlled through a custom Android app.

The various requirements for making this project yourself are

Hardware:

Particle Photon
MORNSUN LS03-15B05SR2S(-F) AC to DC converter
MORNSUN B0503S-1WR2 DC to DC converter
SUN HOLD RAS-0510 Relay
TIP122 transistor
1A Fuse(with holder)
S14K320 Varistor
13D-5 Thermistor
SMBJ7.0A Diode
10K Resistor
Capacitors[10uF(400V),10uF(10-20V),4.7uF,330uF(25V),68uF(35V),0.1uF(50V),1nF(400VAC)]
Inductors[4.7mH,2.2uH]
Header Sockets
Female Header Pins
Connecting Wires
Multi-strand Wire
Wire cutter
Electrical Tape
Copper Clad PCBs/PerfBoards
Soldering Gun
Soldering Wire
Switch Board with 5 pin socket
3 pin plug

Software:

Android Studio
Particle build IDE
Eagle CAD

Okay,so if you have all the above items, then let's start.

Step 1: Hardware Construction(Part 1)

(Warning : We are going to deal with very high voltages. Please take the necessary precautions.)

The hardware consists of 4 main parts:

Circuit to convert 240V AC to 5V DC
Circuit to convert 5V DC to 3V DC
Particle Photon
Switching Circuit

The basic working of the hardware is that it takes the 230V AC from the wall and converts it to 5V DC. This is further step down to 3V to supply power to the microcontroller. Here we are using the Particle Photon as our microcontroller because of it's wifi capability and the amazing community where you can get all the info and support related to the device and it's related software. This device is used to switch on or off the AC circuit of the wall socket by switching it's GPIO pin D0 to switch the switching circuit.

For the first circuit we are using the MORNSUN module LS03-15B05SR2S(-F) to convert the 230V AC from the wall to 5V DC so that it can be used as power supply to the Photon after stepping it down. This circuit helps the Photon to work continuously without the need for a battery supply to the Photon, saving the hassle of charging/changing the Photon's battery. You can use the datasheet to understand the specs of the module. Use the datasheet to make the circuit to use the module. You either use EagleCAD to design the PCB and give it to PCB manufacturing house to get a ready made PCB. You can also make the circuit manually on a Perf board or a copper clad PCB.

LS03-15BXXSR2S.pdf
Download

Step 2: Hardware Construction(Part 2)

For the second circuit we are using MORNSUN B0503S-1WR2 module to step down the 5V DC to 3V DC as the Photon works on 3V(3.3V to be precise). Use the datasheet to design the circuit and make it's PCB.

Note: If you read the data sheet for LS03-15B05SR2S(-F), there is a module LS03-15B03SR2S(-F) that directly converts 230V AC to 3.3V DC. You can use this module to save yourself some time and hardware designing. Then you have to make the first circuit and buy components according to the datasheet.

The Photon is the brains of the project. The 3V from the second circuit is given to the Photon through the pins Vin and GND. If you are a beginner to using Particle Photon, you should check their great documentation . Connect the D0 pin to the switching circuit.

The switching circuit receives digital signal from the Photon, which is given to the base of the TIP 122 through a 10K Ohm resistor. For the circuit you can check my Github repo which has the schematic design for the switching circuit.

Use female headers to your PCBs to connect the circuits and the Photon.

B_S-1WR2.pdf
Download

Step 3: Software Designing

The software part has two parts

Photon Firmware
Android App

The firmware code uses cloud callable functions to receive command to switch on or off the board from the Particle Switch Android App that is run in your mobile.

For the Photon Firmware, you first you need to make an account at particle.io .Then you have register your photon to your particle account. Now go to the link to the Particle App
https://go.particle.io/shared_apps/597b24204aa2fef... .

Upload the code to your photon and then your Photon is ready.

For the Android app, you first need to have Android Studio installed in you PC. After that go to my Particle Switch App repo to download the app for controlling the hardware using the mobile app. In the app when the toggle button is pressed to turn the socket on, the app sends a command to the function in the device firmware to switch the circuit on. The same is done when trying to switch off. In the MainActivity.java file add your particle account details and the access token. Install the app to your mobile using Android Studio.

Step 4: Testing

For testing,connect all the hardware as shown in the photo above. Make sure the connections are tight and all the necessary precautions are taken. We are using the 3 pin plug to test the device by inserting it in a wall socket. Double check everything and then push the plug to a wall socket and then switch on. If there are no short in the PCBs or open wires shorting, the particle Photon will switch on and use the pre-configured settings to connect to the wifi. Now wait for the LED on the Photon to breathe Cyan(indicating connection to Particle Cloud was successful). Then either using the AVD in Android Studio a or your mobile,run the app. When after the "Connecting..." message pops, use the tap button to switch on or off the 5 pin socket to which the hardware is connected. You can verify by connecting your charger to the socket.

Step 5: Further Improvements

This project displays only the very basic possibilities of the device. Many features can be added to the hardware and the software

We can add automatic switching of the socket where the mobile app receives data of the battery status of the device being charged and once it is fully charged, the app sends the command to switch off the socket.
We can display the power consumed in charging any device in a day and display it on a graph.

These are only a few ideas.

I am open to any improvements or suggestions to the project.

Thank You!!!

Aditya