So I picked up a RF remote and transmitter from another site for a project for the kids…
I set it up on my bread board and works like a charm for what I have which is just 2 red leds powered by 9v battery.
Im placing this inside a helmet to light up the eyes… and the kids thought it would be cool to have a set of red LED’s and white LED’s , of course this was brought up after I ordered and received the 1 button key fob. So my question, is there any chance that I can wire something up so that when you click the button you are simply cycling thru the 2 sets?
the helmet already has a power toggle switch which is controlling the power, but can I control both sets of LED’s with this 1 button remote?
Yes you can switch from 1 set of LEDs to the other via cosequtive button pushes. A way to do that would be to use a DPDT relay. One pole can be open when the relay is de-energized, the other is closed thus turning on 1 set of LEDs. Then when the relay is energized the contacts switch states. Now the other LEDs come on.
A better way would be to use the electronic equivalent of a relay. In either case it would be useful to know what the receiver output circuitry is.
Right now the current project we are going with the single set of lights… so it works great, the next project is going to be to add 2 sets…
Now can I ask, if we wire all this up, run it off a 9v battery and switch to the 2 button key fob to control each set, when the LED’s are off, is there any need for a power switch? I mean currently we have a power switch in place that has to be turned on then we can control the lights… but wondering if we could do away with the switch and wire everything up, and control everything from the remote.
A power switch will also turn off the RF circuitry as well as the decoder and LED circuitry. Even w/o any LEDs on, the rest of the circuit is going to draw power. How much ? I can’t say ATM. I’m tracking down a better datasheet than the one Adafruit supplies in order to see what kind of current the outputs of the decoder IC (PT2272-) can provide.
What pin do you have your LEDs + resistor(s) presently wired to ? Is the other “end” tied to ground or Vcc (a 9v battery) ? I think you may be able to use the following arrangement to toggle between your 2 sets of LEDs (if you keep the pwr switch). It will depend on what I can find out for the output capability.
The output pins of the decoder can’t supply 20 mA. Can I assume you have the 2 red LEDs and 440 ohms between the D2 pin and ground ? If so you might have expected 13 mA but you wouldn’t be getting that in reality. Still if those LEDs were bright enough, you could try the scheme above with R2 = 100 ohms.
If that doesn’t work well enough, then you can add some transistors to get more current. I’ll diagram that later.
