Do I need to solder my own dimmer?

hey,

I have seen that a lot people control 230V AC lamps with the arduino. Someone suggested http://www.hoelscher-hi.de/hendrik/english/dimmer.htm as a tutorial for that.

Unfortunately I am more a programmer than an electrician, which means I do not understand the tutorial that I linked and I don't think it is a good thing to work with 230V without any knowledge about what exactly I am doing (+ I can't modify it to include an arduino :wink: ).

Is there any ready-made piece to make things easier? I am okay with building things that use 12V (or 5V or whatever) and I built things with LEDs and motors successfully.

I thought about using a dimmer switch and a step motor, but this seems like a kludgy solution to me. Maybe there is something better?

Thanks,
Alex

Ok that circuit is not one for a beginner.
Simply get an SSR (Solid State Relay).
The simplest ones just switch. You can get ones that will dim, they are sometimes called phase controlled SSRs. And they are a simple low voltage connection to the Arduino. You then use PWM to control the brightness of the opto coupler LED that is built in inside them.

This is an example of one but I have seen them at one third of the price on ebay
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Crydom-10PCV2475-Solid-State-Relay-Proportional-Power-Controller-/251157360536?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a7a252f98

Thank you, this looks like the thing I was looking for.