Following up on the successful implementation of the drawer lights, I decided to make a small dimmer for the bedroom lights. The lights are the ‘Ledberg’ type from IKEA (see the drawer light posts) and run on 12V. This makes the dimming very easy – we just need a FET and a control signal to adjust the levels.
I happened to have some IRF530 NMOS in the parts drawer. Datasheet states that they can handle 14A so that should be more than enough for my purpose. If I recall correctly each part of the Ledberg strip consumes 60mA or so, so driving 8 of the strips would be no hard effort for the IRF530.
The control signal will be generated by a PIC16F688 which I have been using for quite some time now. Schematic will follow soon.