Controlling a (Grundig) RGB moodlight

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1

Hello Everyone,

I just wanted to show of an work in progress project using the Arduino.

A few days ago I bought a Grundig RGB Moodlight. But the thing was controlled with a IR remote and it conflicted with other remotes in my house. So I decided to hack it! :slight_smile:

So far I can switch between the colors using a Potentiometer. I am going to add buttons so I can control the brightness too.

Watch it in action on Youtube

The short version of what I have done is replace the IR sensor with an optocoupler that I control using an Arduino.

I started out checking if anyone had hacked the Light before and if I could find any schematics on it. All I could find were stores selling the Moodlight, so I decided to try to find out what was on the inside. A quick peek showed that is used a simple IR sensor. I decided to check the voltage level, de-soldered it and soldered wires to the holes in the PCB and to the IR sensor.

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The sensor was in the right top corner.

Now I had the IR sensor which I could connect to the Arduino. I used the IRremote library read what values the remote sends when I press a button.

Then I used the IRremote library in my own project to send these values when I rotate the potentiometer to the optocoupler.

The reason I used an optocoupler was that I did not want to have an electrical connection from where the IR sensor was to the Arduino. Since I was not sure how things would react.

I haven't had the light on for much longer than a minute so I am not sure how well this will perform but at this point the Arduino and the moodlight are separate circuits so the risk of frying the Arduino is minimal but the risk of frying the moodlight... havn't thought about that one.. :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway, if you have any questions or comments feel free to comment on this topic!

Also, sorry if my English isn't very clear, I am from The Netherlands.

2

Nice project , thanks for sharing.

Presumably, you had to invert the signals from IRremote, somehow, and remove the modulation?

FYI: your English is clearer than many 'English' speaking people :slight_smile:

3

IRremote took care of the raw signal processing. All I had to do was hook up the sensor and start up the sample project to read the byte values from the remote via serial on my computer.

When I am a bit further I can share my code. It is all very easy, thanks to the IRremote library.

I am thinking about adding Bluetooth to my project and maybe replace the potentiometer meter with a rotary encoder so I can keep on turning the color mode dial.

4

Great, so I presume you did not use IRremote to send you signal to the mood light.