What was that? A What’s-a-Maja-Thimagig?
Yep – One of those! This Instruct able extends my Arduino Ethernet controller to control a set of up to 6 relays, but that’s not the neat bit. The neat bit is that there is a web based state machine in the At Mega chip so that the relays will operate in whatever sequence with whatever timing you want – all by themselves.
This allows you to have a set of relays connected to the end of a piece of Ethernet cable that can be accessed from a web browser anywhere from your house.
I needed a system to sequence a set of relays to control some Christmas lights around my house this Christmas, as well as to turn on and off a water fountain, so I thought that a simple controller for it would be an AtMega328 chip. Then I thought about how cool it would be to allow these things to be controlled from a web interface. A little bit of tinkering later, and this project was born. I really only needed 4 relays, but as I was doing the layout, I decided that here was enough space for 6!
This project is an autonomous controller, operating a set of 6 relays according to a pre-programmed pattern, over and over again. If you are impatient, jump to the section on programing the board to see how it is programmed.
In my case, I wanted to control a fountain and some Christmas lights, so my pre-programmed pattern is as follows:
Relay 1 – Front fairy lights
Relay 2 – Fountain Blue Light
Relay 3 – Fountain Green Light
Relay 4 – Fountain Pump
On startup, do the following forever until it is switched off:
Turn on the Fairy lights, the Blue light and run the pump. After 3 minutes, turn off the blue light, and turn on the Green light. After 3 more minutes, turn off the fountain and the fountain lights.
Read More: A Remotely Programable Relay Controller