Introduction: ARMTRONIX WIFI Dimmer Board V0.3

Armtronix Wifi dimmer is a IOT board.The features of the board are:

  1. Wireless control
  2. On board USB to UART
  3. On board AC to DC power supp1y 230VAC to 5V DC.
  4. DC virtual switch
  5. Works with HTTP and MQTT
  6. Extra headers of ESP and Atmega

The size of the board is 110mmX55mm, as its shown in diagram1 ,has a capacity to drive 4Amps load. The board has the Wifi module and microcontroller(atmega328) which is used to control the triac through HTTP or MQTT. There is on board USB to UART and micro USB to program the ESP 8266 and atmega328.The board also has Power module AC to DC of 100-240VAC to 5V up to 0.6A, two triac BT136 and Terminal connector. There is Zero cross detection is also available.There are two triac one is used for dimmer and second is used as switch as its shown in diagram 2.

Step 1: Header Details of Board

The diagram2 gives the details of the headers and terminal blocks.To board 230VAC is applied to the input terminal block and loads are applied to the output1 and output2 block.

The diagram6 gives the header details of the J3, J7,J5, J6 and J1.

On the board J3 header is used give the 5v or 3.3v to controller, refer the diagram2 this is made by using jumper arrangement. If pins 1-2 of J3 is short then the controller runs at 3.3V, if pins 3-2 of J3 are short then controller runs at 5V as shown in diagram6

J1 header has ESP free gpios , users can use for there purpose. For gpio’s refer the diagram6 in that you find the header details in that header 4 and 5 cannot be used.

J6 header is a standard SPI header is used to upload the bootloader to atmega initial(board comes with preloaded bootloader)

J5 and J7 header gives the details of atmega gpio’s , in the brace the arduino programming pins are shown.

S1 button is for Key flash for ESP.

S2 button is for reset of ESP.

S3 button is for master reset when you press the button both ESP and Atmega resets

Step 2: Programming Headers

J2 Header is used to upload the firmware to ESP or atmega through the USB to UART by using micro USB details of headers can be found in the diagram5.To upload the new firmware to esp via selecting the com port short the pins 3-4,5-6 and 9-10 using jumper settings. To upload the new firmware to atmega via selecting the com port short the pins 1-2, 7-8 and 11-12 using jumper settings .After programming both ESP and Atmega we have to establish connection between ESP and Atmega by shorting 1-3 and 5-7 using jumpers settings.

Step 3: Configuration Details

Power the board with Input with 230V AC the device will host the access point as shown in diagram7, connect the mobile to access point with Armtronix-(mac) EX: Armtronix-1a-65-7 as shown in diagram8.After connecting open browser and type 192.168.4.1 IP address in the browser,it will open the web server as shown in the diagram9, fill the SSID and password and select HTTP, if user wants to connect to MQTT then he has to select mqtt radio button and enter MQTT broker IP address and enter MQTT publish topic and MQTT subscribe topic and submit.

After configuring the submit the ESP 8266 will connect to the router and router assigns IP address to the ESP.Open that IP address in the browser to control the dimmer and switch.

Without configuring the SSID and Password we can control the Wifi dimmer board by connecting to the access point of the device and open the IP address of device i.e 192.168.4.1 the web server page will show the link with the name Control GPIO as shown in the diagram9 by clicking this link also we can control the Wifi dimmer board but the response will be slow.

Step 4: Wiring Diagram

The wiring diagram of switch(output2) and dimmer(outout1) is shown in the diagram3 and diagram4 respectively and to input terminal block 230VAC Phase(P) and Neutral(N) is given .The output1 is dimmer is connected to the dimmable light to control the intensity of light and also to control the speed of fan . The output2 is switch the load can only be turned or and off.The output2 is can also be controlled via DC virtual switch as shown in the diagram3 Gpio A0 of atmega is used for virtual switch.