Grobenn25 built an interactive LED handrail system using an Arduino that monitors a large array of infrared sensors to detect what step the user is on. Based on the current detection pattern the stairs will light the LEDs under the handrail appropriately. During the production he looked at many different types of systems and settled on this overkill system. The sensors are changing their detection parameters constantly so that
This DIY Strip Light Stair Lighting Design and Install over at Speedy Signals looks nice. The project uses a ATmega328P which is very common in the Arduino scene. The microcontroller interfaces with some shift registers to power the lights. Some 2N7000 mosfets are used to drive the actual LED lights. By using the Arduino ShiftPWM library he is able to have individual control of all the steps. Beam sensors were
Titan Homes is adding some cool stair lighting to some of their custom homes. Check out the video of the Reactive Lighting stair lighting system they install for their lucky customers. Austin demonstrates how the stair lighting controller can easily be configured by just flipping a few switches. A few of the many lighting sequences are demonstrated by using the random mode which looks like a lot of fun! They
Mike Szczys from Hack a Day shares a hack that he found by Geert on his Just a Thought blog. Geert wanted to jazz up his stairs but adding some DIY RGB LED stair lighting. He used an Arduino Uno for the brain and some TI TLC5940 chips to do the heavy lifting of doing the PWM (pulse width modulation) for all of the channels of LEDs. “We need a
This LED Stair Lighting Controller will make your home look amazing. The idea is to control two sensory infrared “beams”–a lower beam for the bottom step and another at the top of the stairs. Whenever the beam detects something interrupts (like feet) then the stairs light up, and after a 15 second delay, the lights will then automatically turn off. This install was done with custom blue 5mm LEDs, the
An automatic stair lighting system is one which lights each step LED when a user starts to climb or descend.  Erica Kane has developed a similar Open Source DIY Automated LED Stair Lighting system using an Arduino Pro Mini, a M5451 LED Display Driver to power the LEDs and a PING ultrasound distance sensors to detect when someone enters the stairwell. The Eagle schematic file is here and the Arduino Processing
Those who are having foot lights in their stairway, then acme663ryo has an interesting stuff for you. According to acme663ryo, your foot lights are having epoxy pools of glass in the knot holes. These can be triggered by any light motion sensor, which in turn drives a solid state relay. The relay during its active cycle switches your DC power supply ON and through which you can connect your LED lights. In
