Remote Controlled Lighting / Off road Flood lights

[tyler.96]

I was poking around looking for a place to put this in case anyone wanted to see. I'm still waiting for better weather to get out and take better pictures of the light output, but this will do for now!

2 LED Cubes found for CHEAP on amazon here.




I have the lights going through an 8 channel relay board wired up to an Arduino Uno microcontroller getting signals from a 4 button key fob and 4 channel momentary receiver.

For now, I have the lights on 2 seperate channels/buttons, but will eventually combine when I get more lights to use.

There are 8 relays, and 4 buttons on the key fob, so I just pre-wired 4 toggled channels. I am using 2 for the back lights, and will use 1 for the front flood lights when I get them installed, one for bed + toolbox lights, and maybe an air compressor in the future.

Enough words, here some pictures from the night I installed them!








And all of this is completely isolated from my electrical system. I am running a dry-cell battery that we use in our robotics (works awesome!) going to a terminal block, grounding block, fuse block, 2 12v outlets, and to the black box that houses the micro-controller and relays.


Immediate future plans are to install the front flood/ fog lights, and install the bed lights. I also will be programming in a timer for the bed lights.

Somewhere in the future is a headache rack mounted solar panel, OBA (which i have), and start making more remote controlled light modules!
This was a fun project, and is ever evolving! I would love some feedback, and see some more pictures of the off road lighting installations!

 

[rawlk]

Looks like fun, Got some velcro or something to hold it all in place? First time ya make a heavy right turn your lights are going out! :Wow1:

You should post up the code somewhere once you get it polished up, I'll be doing the same sort of thing, but hopefully with a raspberry pi. I'm sure others will be interested in a customizable power board

 

[thebigblue]

Hmm, I'm certainly not a Arduino expert, but why the Arduino in this fairly simple setup, a cheap timer and a few standards relays could do the job...right?

 

[tyler.96]

Hmm, I'm certainly not a Arduino expert, but why the Arduino in this fairly simple setup, a cheap timer and a few standards relays could do the job...right?

I'm sure it would! The remote receiver I had however was a momentary receiver. So the Arduino became the toggle function. Probably could've found a work around for that too. I did however find out that the relay module was wired kind of weird. 5volts to the relay would de-energize the relay, and 0v would energize it.

 

[tgreening]

I'm sure it would! The remote receiver I had however was a momentary receiver. So the Arduino became the toggle function. Probably could've found a work around for that too. I did however find out that the relay module was wired kind of weird. 5volts to the relay would de-energize the relay, and 0v would energize it.

Unless I'm missing something that isn't weird. You have normally open relays and normally closed relays. Sounds like you have a normally open. Power opens the path, loss of power closes the path.

 

[tyler.96]

Correct. However if I wired it the other way, if I lost my 5v source (for instance if it came unplugged) it would turn on all the lights. :Wow1: Don't want to unintentionally blind people going down the road.

 

[tyler.96]

Haven't updated this in a while, so I'll bring it up to speed, in case anyone finds value in it.

Latest truck shot.


Made a little center console to house new cup holders, 7" backup screen, CB Radio mount, and power switch for my accessories. The switch is wired to always on power, and controls my radio, backup monitor, and dashcam.

 

[tyler.96]

Took off the sideboxes, added the headache rack. Included lights on there. The floods on the rack will be moving to the side for alley-style lighting during the next phase.


The biggest part of the past year and a half was the change in control system. I wanted it to be more modular, and easier to replace/add parts to the controller. Each set of terminals is a separate channel. So right now, I have 8 channels wired up. With my Arduino Mega powering the system, I can easily expand up to 50 individually controlled channels.

 

[tyler.96]

Right now, I'm still controlling the whole system from just the remote. That will change in the future, with a 2 switch system on the center console.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28yyjMoC-1g

 

[vitola231]

This is great!!! I keep looking longingly at a PI, want a relay pack like you have, OBD2 software, screen and a surround camera system with a forward facing night vision:drool:, I know it is doable I just don't think its doable by me. I have seen PI3's controlling relays with touch screen and OBD2 software. Will buy some drone cameras for sure, foxier night wolf is like $60.

 

[Rezarf <><]

Very cool, interesting that you can customize the board. Nice looking truck too, I always liked the style of that gen Ford.

 

[tyler.96]

Sounds like a solid plan! I had thought of using a Pi for the project and make an app for bluetooth to control it, but that's a little beyond my scope of knowledge. My buddy over on F150Forums however did make some progress on a bunch of features you listed to use a pi for. You should check it out. --> https://www.f150forum.com/f78/custom-touchscreen-controlling-lights-obdii-reading-more-326225/

As far as camera system, I'll just say beware, Pi's aren't great at capturing videos, much less streaming them. I'm sure @Rawlk can chime in on that.

This is great!!! I keep looking longingly at a PI, want a relay pack like you have, OBD2 software, screen and a surround camera system with a forward facing night vision:drool:, I know it is doable I just don't think its doable by me. I have seen PI3's controlling relays with touch screen and OBD2 software. Will buy some drone cameras for sure, foxier night wolf is like $60.

 

[tyler.96]

Very cool, interesting that you can customize the board. Nice looking truck too, I always liked the style of that gen Ford.

Thank you! It's been fun to work on it. Definitely unique, and as a college student on tiny mod budget, it's been an adventure to play with.


I took the truck on a 1800 mile road trip over spring break to Minnesota and Wisconsin. Definitely a trooper.

 

[rawlk]

...
As far as camera system, I'll just say beware, Pi's aren't great at capturing videos, much less streaming them. I'm sure @Rawlk can chime in on that.

Can confirm. The raspberry pi is pretty crummy for capturing video. I was using a usb webcam and motion in raspbian to detect any movement (people walking by, driving etc) and then have it record to the sd card. For any useful framerate, I had to drop the resolution down pretty low. It is useful enough to give context, but not much more than that. Heres a link to a sample video the moving box is what motion sees as 'motion'.

The idea was cool, but I think I'm going to augment the auto-uploading via open wifi with a true dashcam. Just need to build a better way to pull the data off the camera when its parked.

 

[vitola231]

wow, thanks! Thats pretty cool on ford forum . I guess the trick is to bypass the PI and send video direct to screen when wanted.