Hi!
I am presently working on a home appliance project being remotely controlled via a bluetooth enabled laptop. The project consists of a normal household fan which I can turn on/off and regulate the speed and a wall lamp which I can switch on/off and dim. Both devices use 110V and operate on a 60Hz cycle. I would like to know if Rabbit’s Bluetooth application kit is suitable for this project and if so, what methods should I consider in implementing this kit? I also wanted to construct a GUI using vb.net 2008. Can this be integrated with the RCM3100 or can I develop a GUI using Rabbit’s Dynamic C?
Thanks.
You could use either the Blue Tooth App Kit, or if you already have a 3000 based development kit, you may be able to use the Blue Tooth Add On kit which is substantially cheaper.
Bluetooth Add-On Kit
Either way, the part that will not come with the kit is the circuitry to control the AC motor or lamp. If you don’t already have a circuit in mind, you could find a suitable circuit here:
Triac Based AC Control Circuit
You could use the opto-isolator option for R that takes a 2.5v to 3.5v output to control the level of the the light or speed of the motor. This could be driven by a PWM output on the Rabbit by using an RC filter and op amp to create a simple DAC circuit. The opto isolator not only gives you a simple control method, but puts an isolation layer between the processor side and the AC circuitry.
Thanks for all your help. The information will definitely be taken into consideration.