Hi guys, I'm working with arduino for a few months now, and I'm looking at creating a rough prototype for a lamp based project. Essentially what I need to know is if I can control the brightness of a GU10 LED bulb with my arduino? If so, could any tell me how?
Thanks
If you can open up one, and see what kind a constant current chip inside, than probably we could figure out how to "up-grade" design, other way you can't change a brightness of the bulb which has current regulator build-in.
I see, I was hoping there'd be a quick solution to save me having to create a solution to doing it, would probably just be easy to solder a few LEDs together, right?
Yes, I think so. It doesn't worse to play with mains for a few leds only, even if there was simple way to control current, you still would be facing safety issue.
Is it a dimmable bulb? You could always go really ghetto and use a standard mains dimmer switch attached to a servo controlled by the Arduino. That would be the quickest and safest method imo. Not pretty or particularly clever but it would work.
I will being doing something similar with a GU10 tracklight. The GU10 bulbs are 110V halogen and the tracklight is dimable using a standard wall dimmer. But the project will replace the 4 bulbs with 3W RGB LEDs that will be arduino controlled. But to do this, I have to gut each of the housings and run wires in the track to the arduino that will be housed in the ceiling and powered by a 5V transformer. The arduino will then control the colors/intensity of the bulbs by PWM signals to MOSFETs that power the LEDs.
Is this similar or are you starting with something different?