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Intelligent lighting control with LEDS for smart home

Article · April 2015

DOI: 10.1109/SGC.2014.7090861

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 Intelligent Lighting Control with LEDs for
Smart Home
Armin Barghi and Amir Reza Kosari
Department of Mechatronics Engineering
Faculty of New Science and Technologies,University of Tehran
Tehran, Iran
{Barghi_armin & Kosari.a}@ut.ac.ir
Abstract—This paper presents intelligent lighting control system
for smart home. The AC power source is converted down with an
AC to DC switching power supply, then is delivered to some LEDs
with an LED driver. This paper proposes two methods of lighting
control. In the manual control method, LED is controlled with a
PWM signal. In fact, according to the user command, it generates
the proper duty cycle in a PWM signal. In the automatic control
method, the LED is controlled with a signal generated by the PID
control algorithm. In this method, the photocell measures the
ambient light level and with reference to the input command by
the user, proper PWM signal is generated. Circuit schematics and
the implementation details are presented. A laboratory prototype
is also designed and tested to verify the feasibility, and the
experimental results are demonstrated.
Index Terms—PID, LED driver, Switching power supply, Home
lighting control.
I. INTRODUCTION
Light Emitted Diode (LED) is a member of the family of
diodes that emits light. Diodes are semiconductors. Electrons
that pass the diode will have a drop from the conductivity band
to a lower orbital, so they can release energy in form of photon.
This is caused by applying a proper voltage to the leads. By
physical and chemical alterations in LED's structure, we can
create light in different colors and intensity.
Diverse uses of LEDs in lighting caused the production of
LEDs with higher power and lighting. High-power LEDs
(HPLEDs) or high-output LEDs (HO-LEDs) were
manufactured to operate on more than an ampere and they emit
over a thousand lumens [1].
Home lighting is an important topic in energy
consumption. According to statistics declared from The
Department of Energy and Climate Change, the total amount
of electricity consumption by home appliances between 1970
and 2013 grew by around 1.7 percent per year over this period.
Also, in 2012, the average annual electricity consumption for
a U.S. residential utility customer was about 900 kilowatt
Maede Shokri and Samad Sheikhaei
Department of Electronics
College of Engineering University of Tehran
Tehran, Iran
{M.shokri & Sheikhaei}@ut.ac.ir
hours (kWh) per month. Controlling the lighting system,
considering the high speed population growth and limited
available energy sources, is unavoidable [2].
In the last decade, solid-state light sources have emerged as the
lighting technology of choice for many lighting applications
because of their durability, efficiency and reliability. Now the
lighting community can choose from a wide variety of high
power LED products designed to meet specific needs or to
provide more efficient, longer lasting alternatives to traditional
lamps [3].
Here are the top 10 benefits of LEDs according to [4]: Long
Life, Energy Efficiency, Ecologically Friendly, Durable
Quality, Insect repellent, Design Flexibility, Operational in
wide range of temperature, Light Dispersement, Instant
Lighting & Frequent Switching, Low-Voltage operation.
Reduction in power consumption and significant energy
savings can be achieved by using intelligent lighting systems
and switching to LED based lighting systems. Intelligent
lighting systems have lots of features such as monitoring,
control and communication networks, dimming, motion
sensing, ambient light sensing and daylight energy harvesting,
and monitoring various parameters such as energy
consumption and LED temperature. There are various
economic aspects that influence the implementation of lighting
controls. Especially, the indoor lighting consists of the
concerns below:
 Need for energy savings
 Utility rebates
 Creating a sustainable work and home environment
 Enhance comfort and productivity of the residents
Controlling radiated light from a LED is considered in both
increasing human comfort and energy optimization. LEDs are
stable in repeated turning ON and off, so they are dimmable.
This is made possible by applying a PWM (pulse width
modulation) signal to control the brightness and power
consumption. By changing the voltage of output PIN of a
microcontroller between 0 to 5V, PWM signal is generated and
using that we are able to control the level of brightness. In
order to prevent the uncontrollable current amplitude and
extending the life time of LED and also for ease and low cost
of the circuit, LEDs are used with current limiting resistors and
a number of them are connected in parallel to the same PWM
controller [5] [6].
Among the various methods for intelligent lighting system
control, PID algorithm despite the simplicity and ease of
implementation is highly reliable. PID (Proportional, Integral,
and Differential) is a control algorithm that tries to compensate
for characteristics in the system. There are three coefficients in
the PID controller loop. Each component is prefixed with a
gain constant, and when added together, gives the
instantaneous control value that is used to drive the system.
Typically, the designer is generating a voltage to control the
system, so each component can be thought as contributing a
particular voltage to the final output.
In the previous work, some methods have been proposed that
are designed with high efficiency LED drivers. For instance,
in self-adaptive driver methods efficiency improvement of the
linear current regulators was approximately 15% compared to
the corresponding implementation with a constant pre
regulator voltage [7].
II. GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Fig. 1 displays the block diagram of the whole system.
This diagram shows the required steps to set up the power
supply, LED driver, the controller, the communication
modules and the connection between different parts. The
By applying a PWM signal to the base of a power
transistor, we can control the rate of current passing through
the LED drivers. The PWM signal is produced by a
microcontroller. Direct connection of base and pin of the
microcontroller may cause problems such as drawing high
current and chance of resetting the microcontroller, so we must
use isolation.
Figure 1: Block diagram of whole systems. You can see the sub-systems and their connections
overall design is confronted with limiting and intruder factors
that caused the overall system to divide into several sub-
systems, inevitably. Then different parts are separately
designed. The ultimate design is achieved by locating these
parts in their places. By this division, the total design becomes
more modular and comfortable and also helps the designer in
the design process. The possible problems in this production
include: noise, the dangers of high-voltage for individuals, the
heat generated by the lamp, combining digital and analog
circuits and the consequences of using a combination of them
and protection against short circuit and open circuit that the
methods to overcome each of them will be explained in the
related section.
According to the above points, the whole system is
divided to three sub-systems below:
 Power Supply
 LED Driver
 Controller
The required power of the system is provided by the AC
power. Since one of our important goals is to achieve a low
power design, inevitably we used switching power supplies.
First, the AC input power is rectified. Then, using the fly back
technology, it is applied to the power transistor. PWM driver
IC will control the transistor. The output of the transformer is
ready to inject into other parts of the circuit, after passing
through appropriate filters. In the LED driver part, we used
power transistors with the ability to drive the required current
for turning the lamps on. Choosing the appropriate transistor,
and avoiding the short circuits and the open circuits in order to
protect LEDs to increase their lifetime is very important in this
part of design.
In the controller part, by using a potentiometer as an analog
input and also a serial port as a digital input, the user can enter
their preferred values to set the intensity of the environment
light. Also, system has the feature of sensing the intensity of
the environment light and using a special software on the
microprocessor to set the appropriate light intensity.
 III. DESIGN CONSIDERATION
This section explains the performance of the entire system.
The outline is presented in two main parts: hardware and
software. As already mentioned, the hardware section consists
of power supply, the LED driver and the central controller. In
the software section, a flowchart is used to describe the
process.
1. HARDWARE
1.1 Power Supply
The power supply is the most important part of any
electronic circuit. In this project we have used a switching
power supply to provide the required power. The alternative
option is linear power supplies, but because of the versatility,
efficiency, size, and cost, the switching power supply is
preferred in most applications [8].
There is a variety of topologies for designing a switching
power supply. Each topology is suggested for certain
conditions. Based on Table 2 [9] we selected the fly back
topology. According to the output power (5 watts), input DC
voltage (300 V) and for enhancing the safety and the use of
isolation in the input and output and the cost of the final
implementation, the fly back is desirable.
Table2: Switching Power Supply Topology [9]
  8 round two-filar wire on the secondary side
The design process is as follows: The 220 volts AC voltage
is rectified by a diode bridge and with the help of the capacitor,
C1, the amplitude becomes almost constant. The voltage
tolerance for this capacitor is very important, also, we put a
resistor on the Phase wire to prevent passing high current
through capacitor C1, when the capacitor is in the discharge
Figure2: Switching Power Supply schematic
mode. Between the rectifier and transformer an EMI filter is
needed.
The noise of high frequency components that leave the
switching supply and enter the input line would radiate from
the power lines as in an antenna. To reduce these noises, an LC
circuit is needed that operates as a radio-frequency interference
(RFI) filter. It is better to design this filter with a low pass
cutoff frequency of 2 to 3 times the supply’s operating
frequency. Furthermore, adding a small impedance (L)
between the input line and the bulk input capacitor is useful for
reduction of any lethal transient voltage and absorption the
destructive energies by capacitor and any surge protector, from
the input line spikes or waves, with Little chance of increase in
voltage ratings of the components [8].
The heart of the switching power supply is TNY274PN IC.
It generates the PWM pulse to provide 6 Watts power in
adaptor mode. Controlling the duty cycle of the desired output
power is done with respect to the values of the feedback. The
required transformer is winded based on the PI expert Software
recommendation and has the following features:
 EI13-core
 The air distance of 0.2 mm
 112 round wire on the primary side
In high currents, for fast connection and disconnection we
used 1N5818 Schottky diode, a very fast diode that has the
ability to cut off 1A current with high speed.
For filtering output current and voltage, we used additional
filter on the output. One of the most important parts of the
circuit is the feedback voltage, which is done by series
connection between Zener diode and opt-coupler. When the
value of the output voltage goes beyond the given value, diode
is forward biased and by connection of feedback circuit,
reduction of the amount of voltage is commanded to the IC
switches.
1.2 LED DRIVER
Fig. 3 shows a LED Driver. Each LED is used in series with
a resistor. The branches are connected in parallel. Transistor
role is to drive current into the circuit. Resistance values are
calculated for enough current and voltage to drive LED.
Nominal values of current and voltage are suggested by the this module is low power, it provides a reliable communication
data sheet. These values is calculated using Eq. (1). network.
A photo resistor or light-dependent resistor (LDR) or
i photocell is a light-controlled variable resistor. The resistance
of a photo resistor decreases with increasing incident light
intensity; in other words, it exhibits photoconductivity. A
photo resistor can be utilized in light-sensitive detector
circuits, and light- and dark-activated switching circuits.
0.5 ohm 0.5 ohm The resistance of a photo resistor decreases with increasing
incident light intensity; in other words, it exhibits photo
PWM conductivity. When photocell is used in a resistive voltage
2.2 K divider, by reading the voltage and a simple calibration the
light intensity of the environment can be calculated.
1 ohm
2. SOFTWARE
The light intensity value is sent via potentiometer or by the
house central controller via Zigbee communication module.
Figure 3: LED Driver
The algorithm in micro-controller checks whether it is a
different value or not. If it was a new value, ADC converts it
to a digital value and assumes that as a desire point. Then
Vcc=VLED+ (0.5||0.5) × i+ VCE (Sat) +1×i (1)
calculates the PID coefficients and generates the appropriate
PWM signal. This PWM signal is given to the base of the
Vcc = 5V, VLED =3V, VCE (Sat) =1V (2)
driver transistor that makes the LED turn on. Photocell is used
to detect the light intensity of the environment and in case of
i= 800 mA (3)
any disagreement, new PID coefficients and another PWM
signal is generated. When the amount of light intensity is
Based on Eq. (3) the transistor current is suitable for turning
desirable to the user, the system continues to work with the
on the LEDs.
pervious coefficients and wait for new input values from the
user. LED light has a linear relation with the current that passes
1.3 CENTERAL MICROCONTROLLER
through it. But the amount of ambient light can change the
The central controller is the heart of the system. To control
lighting percentage. Imagine a situation, for example
the lighting system, we need a processor with the following
command is sent to the light to be 60%. At 3 PM because of
features:
the sunlight, indoor is bright, then system must provide a PWM
 Analog to Digital Converter module (ADC) with 0% duty cycle (i.e., turn off the LEDs). But, at 11 PM,
 Serial port lack of sunlight indoor, must result in producing a PWM with
 PWM module 60% duty cycle. Fig. 4 shows the flowchart.
ADC module converts analog values to digital. The value
of voltage on the potentiometer pin is converted into the
appropriate digital value. Resolution is one of the most
important factors in choosing ADC. The voltage resolution of
an ADC is equal to its overall voltage measurement range
divided by the number of digitization steps: [10]
𝐸𝐹𝑆𝑅
Q 
2𝑀
For the 10-bit ADC of the microcontroller with 5 volt
working voltage, the resolution is 25 millivolts. It is suitable
for reading the temperature sensor and potentiometer. For
implementation of the central controller, we used Arduino
UNO board. The Arduino Uno is a microcontroller board
based on the ATmega328. It has 14 digital input/output pins,
of which 6 can be used as PWM outputs, 6 analog inputs, a
16 MHz ceramic resonator, a USB connection, a power jack,
an ICSP header, and a reset button [11].
To communicate with the communication module, serial
port is needed. The common module used in automation is
ZigBee. ZigBee follows the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol [12]. For
the implementation, ZU10 module is used. Working frequency
of Zigbee is 2.4 GHz and has the data rate of 360 kb/s. While Figure 4: Software Flowchart
 IV. RESULT
Fig. 5 shows a diagram of efficiency versus the PWM duty
cycle. The highest efficiency occurs when the maximum
electrical current passes through the LED. Fig. 5 shows share
of power consumption for each section in the maximum
efficiency. Table 2 shows experimental values of voltage and
current for each section. This table can be used for calculating
efficiency for each section separately. Fig. 7 shows the final
system.
Figure 5: Diagram of efficiency versus the PWM duty cycle
Figure 6: Percentage of power consumption of each section while operating
at maximum efficiency
V. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
Since energy saving is one of the most important concerns
these days, this design can help a lot in saving electrical energy
in the field of lighting.
Now lots of driver ICs can be found for driving LEDs with
wide variety of features, such as dimming the light of LEDs.
However, designing an appropriate driver with devices that are
low cost and more available to the designers was the
motivation for doing this project. This design is also very
flexible, since it uses some software for lighting control.
Table 2: experimental measurement for each subsystem
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The important advantages of this design include reasonable
efficiency of the driver, biasing the LED in the nominal voltage
and current based on suggestions by the datasheet that
increases the lifetime of LED, and intelligent functionality to
provide more welfare facilities for users.
Figure 7: The final implementation
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