Google Patents CN209031818U - A kind of Roman shade apparatus of corner structure Also, you should put limit switches in place to protect the mechanical parts from running past fully open or closed.CN209031818U - A kind of Roman shade apparatus of corner structure Although your motors may include that if they are designed to control shades. Usually motors are driven with a h-bridge circuit. You'll need to understand the requirements of the motor(s) you use to move the shades. You will miss rapid changes in command data, but for this application, I think it's not a big deal. That way their movement will stop very soon after input stops. You would only have to read the direction of movement of the encoder and adjust the shades until movement stops.Īlso, when reading the data stream from the central controller, you can read in whatever bits you need and ignore others until you can read more data. Not to complicate this issue (actually that's a lie), but you could use a rotary encoder instead of a rocker switch. Anything will work because you are only switching a logic signal on an Arduino pin.A rocker switch would work well for this application.

This power source will run the Arduino and maybe the relays or control circuits you need to switch the motors. Something that puts out 6V (or 9V) DC at almost any mA rating will work. You need an AC adapter from any electronics, department or hardware store to power the Arduino. And, that puts your precious Arduino and stuff too 'close' to a dangerous force. :o Changes in load will affect the voltage output of the divider. HANG ON A MINUTE! Stepping down from mains power to a low-voltage device is not done with a voltage divider - YIKES!.

USE EXTREME CAUTION when doing anything with the power lines. If you're going to work with DANGEROUS power line voltages, deliberately go about getting into the habit of doing something that ensures you're working on de-energized equipment my technique is to hold the power cable (down near the plug) between my teeth before I start I've written a quick tutorial on voltage dividers that you can download at Arduino - A Different Lemming that should help you work out what values of resistors would work for you. That would still give you a bit over 4 -1/4 volts - which would be plenty of margin. Me, I'd hedge things a bit so that I made sure I stayed well under that 5V limit, and go with, say, 30:1. Now, for dropping the 120 (nominal, actually usually closer to 130) voltage to Arduino 5V input, you'll need a voltage divider - specifically, 24:1 (120:5). Electricity will cheerfully kill you unless you're paying attention all the time. About anything you bought would probably last well into the next millenium (electrically, anyway). Wouldn't matter much - for toggling an Arduino input, the voltage would only be 5V, with negligible current. That's one way of doing it the other would be to simply have two (MUCH cheaper) momentary pushbuttons. (Yes, I know it'll have to be physically separated if the switch is LV) Right now this is a thought experiment but I'm gutting the room and need to know if I should make room in a gang box for the shade control. I haven't used an Arduino yet, but from what I read, it seems that I'd need a 5VDC input.

How do I step down from 120V AC to some acceptable voltage for Arduino?.

What voltage / amperage should the switch be?.

Is that the right sort of switch I need to do this?.

When 'up' is held, Arduino reads a voltage and moves the shade up until the voltage stops (e.g., when the switch is released). Inputs #2 & #3 = A momentary-off-momentary rocker switch. So a user would hold down the bright/raise button and let go when they thought the shade was at the right level, but the shade would keep on going until it processed all of the 'bright' messages. Note: with this, I could listen for 'bright/dim' messages and interpret them as raise/lower however, I can't match the speed of the bright/dim messages to the speed of the shade. Listen for certain messages and adjust shade to a given level based on the message received. Namely, using an Arduino to read 3 inputs. That said, I've only thought of one workable solution.

Roman shade control unit