Does anyone make a programmable appliance controller that can handle fluorescent lights?
I want to be able to program lights so that they always go off at 10 PM but match the number of hours in the local day.
I'd start looking at
-- Rich Webb Norfolk, VA
X10.
But not the standard ones
-- Rich Webb Norfolk, VA
I wouldnt buy from them if they were the last ones in the market. They spam me and wont stop it.
-- - Jane Galt "There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism - by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide." -- Ayn Rand, from "Foreign Policy Drains U.S. of Main Weapons"
-- I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean that you want the controller to always turn the lights on at something like "sunrise plus one hour" and always turn them off at 10 PM? What about daylight savings time?
No, I want them to always go off at 10 PM and be on the length of the local daylight. So, for example, if we have 7.25 hours of local daylight that day, I want them to come on 7.25 hours before 10 PM and go off at 10 PM.
-- - Jane Galt By taxing, borrowing and wasting money that the tax slaves must be forced to pay back, Government does NOT "create jobs", it NEVER HAS. It actually consumes and destroys the wealth that the private sector, which really DOES create jobs, could be using to do so!
A PC, X10, and SMOP.
-- So how do you plan to determine the amount of local daylight on an ongoing daily basis??
Table lookup. ;-)
Dawn to dusk sensor?
-- For the last time: I am not a mad scientist, I'm just a very ticked off scientist!!!
I did a solar panel tracker (prototype) that used this method. Rather than actually tracking the sun, which is affected by glass building reflections, headlights, street lights, weather, eclipses, etc, I just plug in the lat-long, and it crunches the numbers.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Good question. If I were a programmer ( I'm not ) I'd use an ephemeris table to pick the number of daylight hours each day and subtract them from
10PM.-- - Jane Galt By taxing, borrowing and wasting money that the tax slaves must be forced to pay back, Government does NOT "create jobs", it NEVER HAS. It actually consumes and destroys the wealth that the private sector, which really DOES create jobs, could be using to do so!
-- An ephemeris is used to locate objects in the sky; what you'd use would be a sunrise/sunset table: http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/astronomical-applications/data-services/rs-one-year-us In response to your original question, I don't believe there are appliance timers out there that do what you want. It sounds like what you're trying to do is mimic the duration of natural daylight, indoors, with sundown being hard-wired to 10 PM. If you're interested I can tell you how to do that.
Yes exactly. I cant figure how to buy something that does it, it would seem to need a PC and an appliance ( not just incandescent lamp ) controller that could be programmed by it. Kind of expensive.
-- - Jane Galt By taxing, borrowing and wasting money that the tax slaves must be forced to pay back, Government does NOT "create jobs", it NEVER HAS. It actually consumes and destroys the wealth that the private sector, which really DOES create jobs, could be using to do so!
-- Depending on the size of the fluorescent lamp load, and since it's an ON-OFF situation you're talking about, all you should need to drive it is a relay or a contactor supplying mains to the ballast(s). Arguably, the easiest way to do it would be to get a cheap PC running DOS and then to write a program which would turn the relay on and off at the proper times via the serial or parallel port. Another option, of course, would involve the use of a microcontroller running a program to turn the relay on and off. In either case, what you'd need to do would be to keep track of real time and then, using the sunrise-sunset table, turn the relay on and off at the appropriate times. Can you say your project's about?
Pet birds.
-- - Jane Galt By taxing, borrowing and wasting money that the tax slaves must be forced to pay back, Government does NOT "create jobs", it NEVER HAS. It actually consumes and destroys the wealth that the private sector, which really DOES create jobs, could be using to do so!
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