Generic Relay

[archived]

Hi , i'v been searching for anny kind of documentation on how to connect a relay to the pluto server and/or  MD's .

But i am only able to find a short description to how to use a gc100 relay

is it posible to conect a relay to the printer port ?? ( el cheapo solution )
or is ther suport for 8255 based isa bus relay cards ??

[archived]

Sort of been looking at this myself. There seems to be quite a few digital i/o modules that are available now which are either serial controlled or USB. Most of them have add-on relay boards or at least basic circuits to enable connection of a relay.

Thought I saw one such device described on the Wiki, but can't find it at the moment.

I imagine any of these serial based boards would be quite straightforward to connect to pluto (if they havn't been already).

Is anyone using anything like this? If so, what are you using it for? I am thinking of using outputs to control relays for lighting etc but the inputs could be good for security sensors.

[archived]

There's a lot of stuff that could be controled via relays, almost annything that just has to bee turned on or off ( obvusly you can not us a realy as a dimmer ) i want use the relay to unlock the front door as my bluetooth phone gets in range of the reciver ( posibly checking and confiming the MAC address for the phone )

But theres a lot of different hardware :-( so it migth be hard to do a generic driver for this.

Unless someone can use/ incorperate the linux open source drivers used in the MATplc project http://mat.sourceforge.net/manual/io/parport.html , i'm sad to say that this is outside my knowlege as i 'm not a programmer.

By incorporating this into the PLUTO source lot of hardware  is coverd ,even the paralell port part.

Conecting relays to the paralell port is easy all you need is a relay ( obviusly ) resistor ,psu, and a transsitor and some soldering skills

a schematic with  optocoplers ( to stop wite expensive smoke coming from your  pc ) is found her  : http://www.geocities.com/dsaproject/electronics/relay/relay_board.html

[archived]

Sort of been looking at this myself. There seems to be quite a few digital i/o modules that are available now which are either serial controlled or USB. Most of them have add-on relay boards or at least basic circuits to enable connection of a relay.

Thought I saw one such device described on the Wiki, but can't find it at the moment.

....

Did you mean weeder board ?

http://plutohome.com/wiki/index.php/GSD_to_drive_a_Weeder_I/O_WTDIO-M

HTH,

regards,

Rob.

[archived]

Sort of been looking at this myself. There seems to be quite a few digital i/o modules that are available now which are either serial controlled or USB. Most of them have add-on relay boards or at least basic circuits to enable connection of a relay.

Thought I saw one such device described on the Wiki, but can't find it at the moment.

....

Did you mean weeder board ?

http://plutohome.com/wiki/index.php/GSD_to_drive_a_Weeder_I/O_WTDIO-M

HTH,

regards,

Rob.

Weeder board are great for driving external relays as well as collecting digital input.
I have one that is plugged to a MD and it is working fine. You only have to write some simple Ruby lines and you are almost done.
If you live in US those boards are really cheap (less than 60$), but if you live in Europe shipping costs almost double the price.

The small turorial found on wiki refers to .39 release of Pluto. Now Pluto Admin pages related to GSD and Ruby code are slightly different, but playing a bit with new interface you can find your way.

That tutorial can also be a baseline guide to manage any serial device, so it can be useful also if you don't use a Weeder board for your relays.

Regards
Marco

[archived]

Yep, the Weeder one was the one that I read about and looks pretty good.

There are also various others that should be pretty easy to interface to.

It is on the list to look at soon, still got some higher priorities first (like getting MDs working properly in each room)

[archived]

Sorry , No its not the Weederboard as this is a serial solution (as is the USB i/o also).

I'am looking for Printerport based swithboard "drivers" and PCI based 8255 i/o cards, both this solutions is used by http://mat.sourceforge.net/manual/io/parport.html whitch is a open source linux based PLS  projekt.