IR Light Dimmer v2

Project actually published here: https://hackaday.io/project/19221-ir-light-dimmer-v2-1kb-challenge-edition

This one will be removed sometimes in the future...

This new version is actually working with the firmware v1, found on my webpage.

The problem I am facing is heating of the 100ohm resistor in the power supply section, as well as ringing (buzzing) of the capacitor connected in series with it. This is due the "reverse piezoelectric effect". When capacitor is charged during normal operation, and when I trigger the triac it basically shorts the supply rails and discharges whatever is contained in the capacitor. This heats up the resistor and forces capacitor to sing/ring/buzz :-)

If there was only a way to use that energy for something useful instead of heating the resistor...

Here is a very simple capacitive power supply circuit, with triac connected across its terminals. Triac will be triggered with negative impulse.

References for power supply and triac control: http://www.st.com/content/ccc/resource/technical/document/application_note/a8/00/35/e2/62/e5/4c/14/CD00266635.pdf/files/CD00266635.pdf/jcr:content/translations/en.CD00266635.pdf

And a very very lazy 10minute implementation :-)

Next step: microcontroller to detect zero crossing and trigger the triac. Lets see what happens next...

Stay tuned :-)