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Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Raspberry Pi takes over the world


OK, if not the world, then 1 outlet at a time!!!
This is a pic of a single relay that is controlled by my Raspberry Pi.
Red = 5VDC, Black = Ground, White = Pin23 (active high)
And an old pc power cord split in 1/2 and a female end installed.
The Ground and Neutral leads feed straight through from the input to the output
The relay switches the hot lead and runs a battery charger drawing 5 Amps AC.
The relay is rated for 10A @ 277V
The Raspberry Pi runs off of my solar array at home and because I have so many items tied to them:
     3 Raspberry Pi's
     1 x 12V HP switch
     1 x Kenwood HF Amateur Radio
     1 x LDG Antenna Tuner
     1 x Radio Shack HTX-242 VHF Amateur Radio

Most days I have enough solar energy to power all my devices.
However if I get several cloudy days together, the voltage can drop and my charge controllers shut down.
Then my Raspberry Pi's shut down...... And that makes me cranky.....

So I have an Arduino monitoring the battery voltage and sends that data via serial to the Raspi
If the battery voltage drops down too much due to lack of sunlight, the charger is turned on for a charge cycle (typically 6-8 hours), and then shuts off.

I plan on making quite a few of these for the many different 120VAC loads that I want to control from my Raspi.
Thanks for viewing;
Robin

2 comments:

  1. P/N: 3550 from ICStation (www.icstation.com).
    I can't build them for that price!
    Thanks,
    Robin

    ReplyDelete