Save on Your Electricity Bill with Your FPGA

Greetings FPGA innovators! Ever had the problem of forgetting to switch off the room lights on your way out? Do you have frequent guests who are not as mindful as you when it comes to power saving? In today’s project we see how to build a simple gadget with the FPGA to switch off your room lights once there is no one in. Not only will The FPGA trip light save power and work intelligently, but it will also help you cut power costs.

The Hardware needed for the project are a FPGA board (adaptation to your own device might be required), 2 off IR transceiver pairs, 4 off 1000 ohm resistors, 2 off 33 ohm resistors and 2 off 100 ohm resistors besides 2 breadboards and jumper wires. The author has shared details regarding the circuit setup, the FPGA board and the Breadboard connections in step 4. A housing model for the circuit has been shown in step 5 which will help the circuit to be used in a more compact and practical way.

The FPGA has been coded with the VHDL language. The black box diagram for implementing in the FPGA and its descriptions has been given in detail in step 2. The code has been divided into modules and has been given for ready availability in step 3.

The basic operation of the gadget is such that one transceiver pair counts the number of people entering the room, and the other counts the number of people leaving the room. The FPGA acts as a simple comparator and when both the counts are equal, the room lights are turned off.

By nyssabackes