Remote Controlled Home Theatre Lights

I really liked the idea of controlling my “Home Theatre” lights with a remote (TV or other), this would save me the exhausting task of heaving myself off the couch to turn the lights on or off.

I found one of my remotes has a spare power button, its one of those stupid “universal” remotes that comes with DVD players or TVs but only work if you have all the same brand equipment, I don’t so this made a good option for a light switch.

Next was receiving the command and switching the lights on/off, again this was made very simple using the Adafruit code and instructions on IR commands, I recorded the IR command and modified the Adafruit code to suit. I also needed the wall switch to work as well, this was done using the spare interrupt pin and the attachInterrupt() function.

lastly was to build the board and install it in the light switch, I took apart an old 5v USB wall wart and mounted it to the board, this converted the 230v~ to 5v for my Arduino.

Warning: do NOT try this at home unless you KNOW what you are doing as this is 230v AC!!

Next I used a solid state relay that could switch 230v ~ at 2A it could also be controlled from 5v this meant there was no extra wiring needed from the Arduino. The best part of using a solid state relay is there is no sound when switching the lights on/off.

I then mounted it all inside a mounting block to give me extra room, and I drilled a hole for the IR sensor. After some testing and debugging it was all working.

Download Code: here