Why do you think that it will give out alot of heat ?
why wouldnt you isolate the gate as well ? many application notes reccomend to isolate the gate many circuits available...
I went through some old parts i had and turned out that i do have a MOC3020 and a 4n25 optocouplers. The MOC3020 appears to be equivalent to MOC2021.
Finally i will proceed with the project and i am going to use optocouplers for both ZC detection and driving the triac.
I have some other questions concerning the same project. I would like to add a 7 seg. display but it seems that the uno only has PORTD available with 8 i/o pins connected to it. Also it looks like im going to need pin 2 or 3 for the ZC detection interrupt.
I think i should i create a new thread for this, yes ?