Circuit Lake

The presented project is a tiny controller for lighthouse based on R8C/13 microcontroller. The hardware design is very simple. The only external components other than resistors and capacitors are: LED used as a light source, CdS photoresistor used as ambient light level sensor, 74AC14 used as very low cost (false) RS232C driver and quartz oscillator (crystal) to control the operating frequency. The controller firmware was written entirely in C language.

The controller has the following features:
– Possibility to store timing information for several lighthouses, together with their names and light characteristics.
– Simple yet realistic simulation of incandescent lamp turn-on and turn-off delay, settable individually for every lighthouse.
– Simulation of visual appearance of three kinds of lighthouse lighting system: blinking lamp, permanent light with rotating blends and rotating lenses with no blends. There is only one LED in the model and no mechanical parts. The effects are obtained by setting three parameters – bias value, turn on delay and turn off delay.
– Ability to turn the light on and off based on ambient light level.
– Ability to switch to a new lighthouse simulation when turning the light on.
– Three modes of operation: always active one selected lighthouse, active when dark one lighthouse, and active when dark, next lighthouse from the list selected when turning on.
– All the parameters and operation mode can be set via full screen menus displayed on a serial, ANSI-compatible terminal (like Windows built-in Hyperterminal).
– Status messages displayed on the terminal.

This lighthouse model controller is built and designed by Grzegorz Mazur from Poland.