I would like to know how I can switch several 220Volt coloured lights through an electronic component other than a realy. I have a PIC which has a very radom sequence of the outputs coming on, I wanted to find out what I can connect to the outputs to get some coloured lights to flash atmy new years party.

Thanks

Rodney

 

Hello,

You could have a look at a Solid State Relays.
These have leds at the input.

Bertus

 

Simply use MOC3041

 

Opto triac
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgu...zbUOeRMOG-0QXP0ICwBw&ved=0CFsQ9QEwBg&dur=3212

 

You may also use MOSFETs if you want.

http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/blog.php?b=518

Your "common" choices are:

• Triac
• SCRs
• MOSFET/IGBT
• Relay
• Solid State Relay

Hope this helps.
Tahmid.

 

You may also use MOSFETs if you want.

http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/blog.php?b=518

Your "common" choices are:

• Triac
• SCRs
• MOSFET/IGBT
• Relay
• Solid State Relay

Hope this helps.
Tahmid.

please remember that this site has a large following of hobbists and that isolation should be promoted as 'common' practice.

 

please remember that this site has a large following of hobbists and that isolation should be promoted as 'common' practice.

Conventional and solid state relays and inherently isolated and therefore probably the best choice for a beginner.

There are also optically triggered triacs available where instead of having a gate connection they have two wires that drive and LED electrically isolated from the main circuit. These are usually only availiable in low current ratings and are commonly used to trigger large conventional triacs (see Dodgydave's link).

Another common method for tungsten light bulbs is to rectifiy the incoming supply and switch with a single N channel mosfet. The bulb sees pulsed d.c. but that's fine as it only cares about the rms voltage. The mosfet circuit can then be electrically isolated either with an opto isolator or a pulse transformer.