So we've all seen this scene dozens of times in movies: a character flips a switch and lights turn on, one at time, down a long tunnel, or throughout a giant garage, or something like that.
I'd like to mimic the effect in my garage and patio, so that all the lights don't come on at once and blind you. But how would I make this effect? From my (limited)research, I can't really find a legitimate electrical or mechanical reason for lights to turn on this way.
The easiest thing for you (still requires DIY though) is to buy these - or something similar. They are time delay relays - now you get several versions/modes.
Something like this (PDF)
On/Off Cycle - is what you are looking for i guess. You also get, Interval,Delay-On-Make, Re-Triggerable Single-Shot, etc
Then say you got 5 lights you set and mark each relay from 1-5 setting the delay 1sec,2sec,3sec,4sec,5sec.
Then you attach each of the relays in the order you want the lights to be on (you will know the order because you marked the relay with a number, yea ;) )
Otherwise
you will be left to build your own relays, circuits and logics... to much work.
Which of course you can find all the info (here)
C1 1 See Notes (at link)
R1 1 See Notes (at link)
D1 1 1N914 Diode
U1 1 4011 CMOS NAND Gate IC
K1 1 6V Relay
S1 1 Normally Open Push Button Switch
MISC 1 Board, Wire, Socket For U1
-EDIT AFTER ACCEPT
I found this on EBAY- a guy in Poland, near my home town actaully.. wierd.. buildts theses babies! Solid State Relays controlled via USB - if you meassage him i am sure he will tweak and build you something to your needs :)
You could do it by making use of Time Delay Relays, but with the cost of parts and effort involved, maybe try just closing your eyes when you flip the switch and open them real slow?
Relays are used for controlling supply of power to an item from a remote switch without having to run the main power through the switch itself.
A common place they are used are in cars, for example on your headlights. Instead of having power go from the battery to the headlight switch then back out to the headlights which would then require the headlight switch be capable of transferring the full amperage required for your headlights (which would make for a more expensive switch and might get pretty warm over time too) a low amp signal goes through the switch and tells the relay when to provide power to the headlights.
A time delay relay works in the same way, but creates a delay between the input signal arriving at the relay and the power being sent down the line.
The reason large arrays of lights are not switched on all at once lies in basic physics:
When switching on an inductove load like a light bulb or fluorescent tube, a shortly-timed voltage spike (and current spike) surges through the system.
If too many bulbs are switched on simultaneously on a single cicuirt, the fuse of this circuit will blow because of the massive spike. If time delay relays are used for groups of lamps, there will be several smaller spikes instead, which the fuse can resist better.
And for a Movie, this looks more dramatic as well ;)
Man-made sources of spikes are usually caused by electromagnetic induction when switching on or off inductive loads (such as electric motors or electromagnets), or by switching heavy resistive AC loads when zero-crossing circuitry is not used - anywhere a large change of current takes place. source
So, timed relays are the way to go for this effect.
Depending on how many lights you want to control, it could get expensive, but Insteon devices from smarthome.com, and an Isy99 from universal-devices.com could be used to make this happen. It's fairly straightforward to write scripts that include loops and delays on the Isy99 and you can individually address the plugin modules. I have a reverse version of what you are looking for set up as a "good night" button in our bedroom -- it turns off the lights one-by-one, leaving the last one to slowly dim to off over several minutes.
You could do this with Home Automation equipment such as X10.
You'd replace your current switch and bulb sockets with ones that can communicate with your home automation controller. Then on the controller configure the lights to act as you want them to.
I don't know a specific model to achieve what you want but I have seen people do similar with home automation.
One example being someone that used motion detectors and light sockets to have the lights come on in a room before you entered it (the motion detectors were in the adjoining rooms).
