Showing posts with label Lighting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lighting. Show all posts

Friday, April 15, 2011

12v Fluorescent Inverter by TIP3055

This is a low-cost project for 20 or 40 watt fluorescent tubes. However the most efficient is to use a 40 watt tube (or two 20 watt tubes in series). It’s a circuit you can put together from junk box components or build from a kit. It’s very simple to build and requires no printed circuit board.
The transformer is hand-wound on a ferrite rod (from an old transistor radio) and the winding wire can be salvaged from an old transformer.

Night security light

Here is a simple circuit switches on a light around 2 hours after midnight, the time at which most of the robberies taking place.
This simple circuit is build around a CMOS IC 4060 to obtain the required timing. During day time the LDR has low resistance and keeps the pin 12 of the IC1 high, preventing the IC1 from oscillating. When it is dark the LDR resistance becomes high and the pin 12 of IC1 becomes low and the IC starts oscillating, which indicated by the flashing of LED D3.The values of the timing components R1, R2, C4 are so selected that the out put pin3 of IC1 goes high after 8 hours. That means the high output drives the triac to switch on the lamp around 2’O clock. At morning, the LDR resistance drops and the pin 12 of IC1 goes high and stops the oscillation, making the lamp OFF. The switch S1 can be used to manually ON the lamp. The capacitor C2 prevents false triggering.

Petrol Gas Switch For A Pajero

My current vehicle, a Pajero, was modified for dual fuel – ie, petrol and gas. However, it’s necessary to run the vehicle on petrol at regular intervals to stop the injectors from clogging up. This simple circuit allows the vehicle to be started using petrol and then automatically switches it to gas when the speed exceeds 45km/h and the brake pedal is pressed. Alternatively, the vehicle may be run on petrol simply by switching the existing petrol/gas switch to petrol. You can also start the vehicle on gas by pressing the brake pedal while starting the vehicle. The circuit is based on an LM324 dual op amp, with both op amps wired as comparators. It works like this: IC1a buffers the signal from the vehicle’s speed sensor and drives an output filter network (D1, a 560kO resistor and a 10µF capacitor) to produce a DC voltage that’s proportional to the vehicle’s speed.
This voltage is then applied to pin 5 of IC1b and compared with the voltage set by trimpot VR1. When pin 7 of IC1b goes high, transistor Q1 turns on. This also turns on transistor Q2 when the brake pedal is pressed (pressing the brake pedal applies +12V from the brake light circuit to Q2′s emitter). And when Q2 turns on, relay 1 turns on and its contacts switch to the gas position. Trimpot VR1 must be adjusted so that IC1b’s pin 7 output switches high when the desired trigger speed is reached (ie, 45km/h). In effect, the speed signal is AND’ed with the brake light signal to turn on the relay. The vehicle has been running this circuit for several years now and is still running well, with no further injector cleans required.
Author: J. Malnar – Copyright: Silicon Chip Electronics