Smart staircase LED lighting with Arduino and IR sensors

For a long time, we’ve been turning on the lights at the beginning the staircase, just to turn them off when we reach another floor.

But instead, we built a simple system to turn them ON automatically when you are going upstairs or downstairs, just by using a couple of IR proximity sensors, a relay and an Arduino Pro Mini, to control the timing.

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Smart staircase LED lighting with #Arduino and IR sensors pic.twitter.com/ns5zh2r8tQ

— Javi Rengel (@rephus) February 11, 2017

If you want to build your own, just follow our guide.

Shopping list

• IR proximity sensor
• Arduino Pro Mini
• Relay
• 5m LED strip

You can optionally use a power converter (from 12v to 5v) if you want to take advantage of the 12v input to power your Arduino and sensors.

• 12v to 5v converter

Schema

Arduino code

#define IR_RECEIVER 8
#define RELAY 10

void setup() {
  // initialize digital pin LED_BUILTIN as an output.
    pinMode(RELAY, OUTPUT);
  digitalWrite(RELAY, LOW);

}

// the loop function runs over and over again forever
void loop() {

  int sensorValue = digitalRead(IR_RECEIVER);
  // print out the value you read:
  delay(10);        // delay in between reads for stability

  if (sensorValue == 0 ) {
    digitalWrite(RELAY, HIGH);   // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
    delay(5000);
  }
  else {
    digitalWrite(RELAY, LOW);

  }
}

Images