Dimming led with IR remote control

Another day, another sketch 🙂 This time I’ve made a sketch to dim a led with my IR remote control. I first tried to use the remote control to directly set the value of the analogue write variable. That way every time I pushed the remote control the value would go up or down. I was getting tired of pushing on the remote control.

So I used a switch case to set 5 steps to control the led. One button of the remote control dims the led up another button dims it down. This way it works much faster then setting the analogue write value between 0 and 255 in steps of 1.

Here is the sketch:

// http://www.bajdi.com
// Dimming LED in 5 steps with IR remote control

#include <IRremote.h> // use the library for IR

const int receiver = 11; // pin 1 of IR receiver to Arduino digital pin 11
const int led =  9;
int fadeValue;
int lastCounter = 1;
int counter;

IRrecv irrecv(receiver); // create instance of 'irrecv'

decode_results results;

void setup()

{  
  pinMode(led, OUTPUT);
  irrecv.enableIRIn();
}

void loop()
{
  counter = lastCounter; 
  if (irrecv.decode(&results))
  {
    if (results.value == 0xFF30CF){
      counter ++;
      }
      
    if (results.value == 0xFF10EF){
      counter --;
      }

  irrecv.resume();  
  }
  
if (counter > 5){      //maximum for counter = 5
    counter = 5;
  }
  
  if (counter < 2){    //minimum for counter = 1
    counter = 1;
  }

  switch (counter){    //depending on the counter the fadevalue is sent to the led
  
  case 1:
  fadeValue = 00;
  break;
  
  case 2:
  fadeValue = 50;
  break;
  
  case 3:
  fadeValue = 120;
  break;
  
  case 4:
  fadeValue = 185;
  break;
  
  case 5:
  fadeValue = 255;
  break;
  
  }
  
  analogWrite(led, fadeValue);    //set led with PWM value
  
  lastCounter = counter;          //reset counter
}