You can get cheap I/O shield, yes that what the call them. For Arduino to drive your light bulb, either mains or low voltage LED. There is an amazing number of parts available. Arduino provide a very simple IDE for write your program. You’ll probably need to add less than a dozen lines to the base code to do your light house flasher.Brilliant - I will consult Mr Google for Arduino. Thanks everyone, I'm up for a challenge, and noted for overkill!
/*
Blink
Turns an LED on for one second, then off for one second, repeatedly.
Most Arduinos have an on-board LED you can control. On the UNO, MEGA and ZERO
it is attached to digital pin 13, on MKR1000 on pin 6. LED_BUILTIN is set to
the correct LED pin independent of which board is used.
If you want to know what pin the on-board LED is connected to on your Arduino
model, check the Technical Specs of your board at:
Arduino Hardware
modified 8 May 2014
by Scott Fitzgerald
modified 2 Sep 2016
by Arturo Guadalupi
modified 8 Sep 2016
by Colby Newman
This example code is in the public domain.
Blink
*/
#define LIGHT 13; // change for the i/o pin you are using
// the setup function runs once when you press reset or power the board
void setup() {
// initialize digital pin LIGHT as an output.
pinMode(LIGHT, OUTPUT);
}
// the loop function runs over and over again forever
void loop() {
digitalWrite(LIGHT, HIGH); // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
delay(1500); // wait for 1.5 seconds
digitalWrite(LIGHT, LOW); // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
delay(1500); // wait for 1.5 seconds
digitalWrite(LIGHT, HIGH); // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
delay(1500); // wait for 1.5 seconds
digitalWrite(LIGHT, LOW); // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
delay(1500); // wait for 1.5 seconds
digitalWrite(LIGHT, HIGH); // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
delay(1500); // wait for 1.5 seconds
digitalWrite(LIGHT, LOW); // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
delay(30000); // wait for 30 seconds
}
I much prefer apple & blackberry pie!A Raspberry Pi would be way overkill - a cheaper and simpler Arduino would easily do something trivial like this.
Whatever route you use you'll need an output board to drive the lights as the computer itself has very limited ability to drive more than a few mA of current, however they can drive relays - on Pis these boards are called "hats" and on Arduino they are called "shields". Again, pretty cheap.
I would go the Arduino + relay shield route for something this simple.
Gets a bit more complex if you want to do a sweeping light beam, but perfectly doable...
It’s got to be a crumble..,.I much prefer apple & blackberry pie!
My own view would be forget either a Pi or Arduino, if this kind of thing is a regular requirement get a general purpose USB I/O board and steer it from a laptop. Velleman do one in kit form or ready assembled for perhaps £35 in kit form or £50 assembled.
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