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How to Turn on a Triac With a Basic Stamp

A triac is a semiconductor device that allows a signal measured in milliamps to control the flow of large AC ̵1; in the range of hundreds of volts and double-digit amperes. The name comes from ̶0;Triode for Alternating Current̶1; and was formerly called a thyristor. Triacs replace mechanical relays, which were formally used for controlling large currents. Stamps are programmable microprocessors that can output control signals under software control. Working together, stamps and triacs can be used to control anything from large earthmoving equipment to small chemical factories.

Things You'll Need

Stamp microcontroller
Parallax DC-16 output expander
Multimeter

Instructions

- 1
  Develop a controlling algorithm and write it in PBASIC -- the language used to program the stamp microprocessor. PBASIC is just the parallax version of the BASIC programming language. It contains all of the BASIC control structures plus commands to designate chip pins as input and output channels and commands to put signals on the output channels.
- 2
  Connect the stamp to your PC via a USB connection. Bring up the PBASIC programming environment and type in your control program. Thoroughly test and debug your program and then download it onto the chip.
- 3
  Adjust the stamp outputs to match the triac input requirements. The outputs of a stamp are always a signal that varies between five volts and zero volts. The purpose of the DC-16 is to take this input signal and translate it to any value that you program into the DC-16.

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