Project: Arduino controlled desk lamp

Other Hardware General Electronics
1

Dear Arduino forum,

Little something about me: Even though I'm an electrical engineering student and should know the basics of linear circuits, I don't have much experience working with it outside school. With my first Arduino Uno r3 board I have just purchased I'm hoping to change this. I have much experience in programming so coding is no problem.

Like the title said, I want to make an arduino controlled desk lamp. I'm still in planning fase so I haven't bought anything yet. My first step is to buy a cheap plain desk lamp and modify that to use my arduino to switch it on and off. The ultimate goal is to make a wake up light alarm.

So I'm not sure wether I got this right, but I don't see any transformers in a desk lamp, so I'm guessing the light bulb works on net voltage (230V AC here).

So what I'm thinking, I can just cut open one of the wires in the desk lamp, connect both new ends with an anode and a cathode of bipolar transistor, and let the arduino control the transistor. Or should I use a relay? Doesn't this sound too simple, will this work?

2

hawkagent:
So what I'm thinking, I can just cut open one of the wires in the desk lamp, connect both new ends with an anode and a cathode of bipolar transistor, and let the arduino control the transistor.

A bipolar transistor for a mains A/C signal? Maybe you need to study a bit harder.

PS: I can tell you haven't typed "arduino controlled desk lamp" into Google. That means you also didn't read the first post in the forum (the one called "How to use this forum").

PPS: Welcome to the forums! :slight_smile: