Programmable LED driver or DIY circuit

[ishan dev]

I am trying to build a responsive stairs lighting system. I have 20 strips of non addressable LED which i need to control via arduino and PIR sensor. also i want to make fade in fade out functions or other combinations for which i need a LED Driver circuit which i can program or instruct via arduino to perform different operations. Please guide me in this direction how can i do it. There is a sample video which i am providing a link to.

video:

Any help is welcomed

LED Strip 12V 1Amp

 

[Harald Kapp]

Google "led stairway control"

 

[ishan dev]

I tried searching a good tutorial but all i end up is buy a ready-made kit. If u go across any of the tuts which you find helpful kindly post me the links.
Thank you for your gesture.

 

[Harald Kapp]

Try these extended search results:
https://www.google.de/search?q=led+...&ie=UTF-8#q=led+stairway+control+instructable

 

[Austin Clark]

Cool project.

How much experience do you have with Arduino currently?
Do you have the PIR sensor already?
Were you wanting to create your own LED driver, or off-the-shelf? You may not need anything fancy at all. Just a transistor and resistor per strip.

You'll probably need to decide on a way to control each strip individually, since the Arduino doesn't have enough PWM pins to do so directly.There are many ways to do this. I'd recommend getting a PWM controller, like this: https://www.adafruit.com/product/815 Though you could probably do without it if you use software plexing.
If you give up on brightness control, an Arduino Mega has enough I/O to directly control the strips.

 

[ishan dev]

I am good at programming arduino for basic logics. I possess an arduino uno plus some pir sensors. It would be a learning experience if i could create my own LED Driver coz there i could manipulate things on my needs. If you could elaborate on what you were saying about transistor and resistors in detail? Thanks for your guidance.

 

[kellys_eye]

Do this is a stepped approach (no pun intended).

Look to just switch the light strips on/off as the PIRs are activated. When you achieve this part then tackle the 'dimming' requirement as a separate issue.

If you break it down to 'switching' and 'dimming' then each individual process is very easy to accomplish using basic Arduino programming thereafter tying the two processes together will fall into place.

There will be (inevitably) Arduino 'sketches' that offer the dim up/down function that you can adapt and similar (basic level) switching sketches for practically any purpose.