Here are several future improvements I’m planning to make with my LED-Lighting Strips

1) Fix the Shutdown Glitch

Towards the end of coding my LED lamp driver, I added a fade in and fade out for the power button. While the effect is pretty, for some reason it doesn’t always properly read the off or on status, which means the lights will sometimes flash off then come back on, and vise versa. I was thinking originally it was a button bounce problem, but I think more likely it has to do with the way I’m recording the on/off mode based on brightness.

2) Add a Purple Light Mode

Right now, I can set the lights to a very red, warm white to a very blue cool white. But I don’t have an artsy purple mode, like is commonly used on buildings these days. I would like to be able to set the lights to purple. This is actually a pretty easy function to code in.

3) Add More Precision Between Warm White and Cold White in Moderate Ranges, around 2500-3200k

This is just a matter of adjusting a few lines of code, but I want more accurate then 100 kelvin change when using the channel up and down buttons when transitioning from a warmish soft-white to a warm white to a yellower light color.

4) Add a Timer Modes

I want to set the LED luminares to automatically start fading out at 10:30 PM each night, and then come back on a 7 AM each weekday morning, following a schedule. I’ve tried counting cycles to make the light come on eight hours later, but I’ve not had much luck at that. Automatically turning the lights on and off at a set time makes more sense.

I might also add a “night light” mode that would either use a photo-diode or just a timer based on the month to glow red a low out put in the evening after dark, so that when I come into my bedroom after dark, it’s not pitch black but still has a small amount of light output. At 5% output with just the red LEDs lit, it would make my bedroom not pitch black, but still only use a few watts or less of power.

These various timer functions would require a DS3221 Real Time Clock board or something similar. Fortunately, I just got four of them in the mail yesterday, so I will be able to move forward on several timer-clock type projects going forward.

5) Store Lighting Setting in the EPROM

Right now if the power goes out, due to be unplugged, the lighting setting automatically reset to default values. If I were to change complier keywords in the source code, I could store those variables in the EPROM, and they would be stored even after I unplugged the fixture. This also would help when the power goes out.

6) Add Warm White LEDs

If I want to improve color rendition and reduce wasted energy, I am going to have to swap out some of the Red-Blue-Green (RGB) LEDs for warm white strings. While it’s true that you can simulate any color you want with RGB LEDs, they have poor color rendition of any color besides red, green, or blue. Yellows, purples, and other colors just appear dull. The light level appears much lower then in reality, because your cones are sensing the color output of anything that is not a pure red blue or green. Eating food under these colored lights just looks bizzare.

To do this, I will have to add a fifth wire to my LED lumineres to provide power for a warm white channel, and then add another MOSFET to drive the LEDs. Then I will have to re-write my code to alter how much white light in comparison to the RGB colors. This would probably greatly increase the apparent light output, really improve the color of everything under the lighting, and just generally improve the usefulness of the project. But it’s a pretty big upgrade, and I don’t know where I would mount the fourth MOSFET on my already crowded circuit board.