I posted a thread yesterday about triac control. Im undertaking a a project titled design of a single phase dimmer circuit and the circuit I'm designing is intended for a dimmer circuit only. A previous project was carried out at my college and this design used and RC diac triac combination to control the firing angle. My tutor has suggested that I expand on this previous work by using a microcontroller to control the gates firing angle. Considering this circuit needs an additional power supply, an opto isolator circuit and Zero voltage switch to control the fire angle is there any point in this level of added complexity, increased cost, and as far as I understand increased power consumption for just a dimmer circuit. Just to clarify is there any advantage in using a microcontroller over a RC diac in just dimmer circuit application

 

This is open in the homework section.