Light Switch Remote

Problem

Create mechanism that can attach to a wall and turn off the light switch from a ranged signal. The long-term goal is to shrink the device.

Conceive

The issue with regular light switches is that many times, a person is very comfortable under his or her blanket and/or too lazy to get up to turn the switch physically off, many times causing discomfort due to the blanket-to-air temperature change.

Benefits

• No more discomfort! You will be able to turn the light off without getting up!
• When you are approaching a dark area and wish to avoid tripping, falling, and dying in the space, you would be able to turn the light on in that area before you step foot into it.
• Would also allow you to control the light in a room without messing with the original wiring of the house and possibly damaging it.

Design

First, the dimensions of the switch and the force it takes to turn it off have to be measured.

• The switch takes between 650-700 grams of pressure to turn off, measured by hanging weights on it until it turned.

• The light switch was on a platform 5mm off the ground
• From the top of the platform to the middle of the switch was 10mm The object turning it must be about 15mm off the wall
• From the side of the platform to the switch was 40mm The object moving the switch must be more than 40mm long

The necessary materials were taken from ones readily available
Stepper Motor

• 5 wire
  • black - ground
  • brown/red - pair
  • green/white - pair
• 75 ohm
• ASTROSYN Minebea Tandon
• 17PS-C007-04 966000-001
• Requires adafruit motor shield
  

The design was based on the available stepper motor.

Platform

• 8mm thick
• 72mm wide
• Fits arduino + motor shield, motor + 2nd platform, 2 gears, 2 9V batteries

2nd Platform

• Necessary to raise motor to height of first gear
• Has part of it carved out so side wont interfere with motor gear
• Needs to be 41.5mm tall for motor to attach to Gear 1 properly
• Needs to be as wide as 1st Platform (72mm)

Arduino

• arduino uno
• Gets input from sensor
• Sends signal to motor to move a certain amount of degrees

Motor Shield

• adafruit
• Prevents stepper motor from melting arduino
• Motor does NOT work with sparkfun monster motor shield

Sensor and Remote

• Button on remote would send radio waves (or other type) to sensor connected to analog pins on arduino
• Adruino would process the info from sensor and move motor the necessary amount

Gears

• One that goes on motor
  • Spring to go over it to keep it in place

• Gear 1
  • Small
  • Inner Diameter - 2.04mm
  • Height - 14.17mm
  • On platform
• Gear 2
  • Large
  • Inner Diameter - 5.10mm
  • Partly off platform to reach switch

Stick

• Attaches to Gear 2 and is the thing that turns the switch

Implement

Putting the base together required me to learn how to use the drill press so I could carve out a hole in the 2nd platform.

Next Steps

Next steps include to use a servo motor instead of a stepper one. This would require one to convert force required to turn switch to torque given by the servo combined with leverage given by gears OR to get the stepper motor to function with the adafruit motor shield. Note that most radioshack servos could be powered by an arduino alone but do not always have enough power for the specific task.