Possible to extend to 20 dimmers ?

[worldhugo]

Hi,

with an Arduino Mega, is that possible to extend the number of AC dimmer to 20 or more ?

Thanks for your work

[junior700]

Hi

There is an interrupt each 83,3us (100 samples in 1/2 sinus at 60Hz) or 100us at 50Hz. Each interrupt, the software verify if there is some of 10 dimmer channel is equal of this time delay to fire a triac. Once to increase the channels do not results in lowering time sample, this may be possible, but I dont know there is enough task time to verify each channel and fire the triacs, and if will be bigger than 83,3us. If it´s bigger, might miss same triac fire and disturb the sistem, because the next interrupt goes on. On the other hand, the sistem might have problem to receive and transmit serial, and some other task, once the sistem was only time to process dimmer and nothing else. Sorry because my poor english, and I hope I was clear enough about.
You could test it modifying this line at Dimmer.h:

/**

• Maximum number of triacs that can be used. Can be decreased to save RAM.
  */
  #define DIMMER_MAX_TRIAC 10

Modify it to 20.

And modify at sketch to define each pin to fire triacs like this:

Dimmer dimmers[] = {
Dimmer(3, DIMMER_RAMP),
Dimmer(5, DIMMER_RAMP),
Dimmer(6, DIMMER_RAMP),
Dimmer(9, DIMMER_RAMP),
Dimmer(4, DIMMER_RAMP),
Dimmer(7, DIMMER_RAMP),
Dimmer(A2, DIMMER_RAMP),
Dimmer(A3, DIMMER_RAMP),
Dimmer(A4, DIMMER_RAMP),
Dimmer(A5, DIMMER_RAMP)
..................................................
.................................................
};

Please tell us if you have sucess!

Thank you