Dimming 220V AC LED spotlights to aquarium

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi

I'm all new to Arduino hardware. I only have limited experience with NIOSII programing before.

My first project will be a aquarium light and I'm currently in the planing stage of it
I would appreciate your advice with some tings.

There are three main functions I'm looking for.

  1. Dimmeble lights going from 0 to 100% over 2-3 hours to simulate sunrise.
  2. Dimmeble blue LED stripe simulating moonlight and make the perfekt light temperature on the days.
  3. LCD display and input to adjust the times and speed the dimmers work at.
  4. Temperatur controlling PC fans
  5. Cheep wireless communication for future projects
  6. energymeter I maybe want to display the current and average powerusage just for fun.

The LED stripe have I figured out fine, so thats no problem.

I found LED spotlights on ebay 3x1W LED, 220V AC and GU10 socket
the seller says they are dimmeble from 0-100%

I've looked around for some good and cheep way to dimm them with the help of an arduino.
It seams that people uses a triac to achieve this but I can't really get the hang of it.
I figure I have to use Interupts and something called a zero-crossing to get this done.
I've seen someone use a standard household dimmer and some capacitor and a photoresistor to delay the trigger of the triac.
The photoresistor style seams to be a lot easier then with Interups.

all the standard dimmers (fo installation instead of a regular light switch) i found on my local dealers webpage is rated from 50-600W this would be a problem for me because I'm only using 4-6 3W lamps

Is there anyone who can explain the best and cheep way to do the dimming.
If its possible I would love to have a diagram over the circuit with values or modell name of the components

all help is appreciated
Viktor

2

I agree with KE7; there are very easy and much safer ways to dim LEDs using Arduino and PWM drivers, we use the Critical Velocity PWM drivers in our lab for motors; they can handle at least 15amps, plenty for aquarium lights. Using PWM would also be much more energy efficient. I would never use mains power to anything filled with water unless necessary.