Reduction of Inrush Current on Load Actuator Stage

The home automation systems represent an advance in people's practicality and comfort. The use of smartphones and the integration with the main systems in home turns assignments simpler. For example, this is possible due to the use of devices which receives the command from the user and delivers to the other systems of the home, also called actuators. However, in a way to compensate this kind of investment, is interesting that exists an economy associated in use of the automation. In this case, is presented in this paper an actuator based on the combination of optocoupler and TRIAC, with low cost and focus on the decrease of inrush current present in the transient stage of lamps in general. For comparison with an actuator based on an electromechanical relay, prototypes are made and experimental tests realized for verification of results, using three different types of lamps: incandescent, fluorescent and LED. The maximum reduction of inrush current obtained was 97.78 %, in the fluorescent lamp.