My stairs lights PCB is ready to be commercialized! Hooray, a product!
If over 100 people order, I could offer the PCB by itself for $100. Otherwise the price will increase. I can also offer full kits with everything (motion detectors, LEDs, case, wires) included for $300. Leave a comment if you are interested.
Story
I have a few posts on this blog and the “stairs lights” post is by far the most popular. Because of this, I completely remade the PCB from scratch using parts from Digi-Key and replaced all the through-hole parts with surface-mount parts. I kept the Arduino bootloader, but no longer require the user to program the PCB. Adjusting settings is as simple as turning some knobs.
The product is still in validation stage and I welcome feedback. For example, is it tolerable to run 16 pairs of wires down the stairs? Are the settings I chose to adjust actually useful? Would this board be useful somewhere else besides stairs? What kind of case would you like? Is installation still too hard?
Demo
- Intended for use with 12V LEDs (board can support 24V upon request)
- Features on-board test LEDs to validate settings before running wires
- No programming required
- Push-down wire terminals eliminate need to solder terminators each step’s wires
- Adjust fade speed, max brightness and propagate speed with knobs
- Adjust number of steps with knob
- Optional mode to keep top and bottom steps dimly lit all the time
- Attach two optional switches to keep lights on indefinitely
- Attach an optional photoresistor to disable the lights in daytime
Assembly
This assembly was done with my mini stairs.
Technical specifications
- Supports 1-16 steps
- Stays on for 20s
- Input voltage: 5-16V (can go up to 28V but it’s more expensive and I don’t think anyone wants this)
- Animation can be triggered every 25-200 seconds
- Microcontroller: ATMega32u4
- 8-bit, 75Hz PWM
- Power usage of the PCB by itself with 12V supply: 0.8W
- Works with 12V active-low pulldown motion detectors
- Max current per step: 2A
- Max total current through VDD and GND terminals: 4A (assuming using two conductors for VDD and two for GND)
- Wire terminals accept 20-26 AWG (0.2-0.5mm^2)
FAQ
Can I just use one LED strip and two motion detectors?
Can I adjust how long the lights stay on before turning off?
No. I kept this at a fixed 20s. If enough people ask for it, I can replace the “propagate speed” knob to adjust “on time” instead.
Do I still need to solder?
Is it made in the US?
Is it open source?
Not yet.
Cool!
Did you ever get the code updated?
At one point I thought you had told me you were in process of doing so.
Thnx, Danny
Yes, the code is updated, but it’s made for PCB version 7. https://github.com/androng/Shift-stairs/tree/Positive_logic With some adjustment, it can be made to work with v1.4. I don’t have the v1.4 hardware anymore though so it would be difficult for me to work it out.