Looks good. How are you running the light schedule? It’s hard to tell in the pics. But is there room in there to put the relays inside the light itself?
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Looks good. How are you running the light schedule? It’s hard to tell in the pics. But is there room in there to put the relays inside the light itself?
i think quite a few of us are asking Santa for a 3D printer!One of these days I may build another one with the @wykat HAT also. But for now I will keep what I have been building. My reef-pi box is packed full right now. I have room for the PCA9865 and that’s about it. I am probably going to have to make a separate relay box. But I will see when my parts get here if I can fit everything. It would be nice if I can. And even nicer if a 3D printer finds its way under my tree
One of these days I may build another one with the @wykat HAT also. But for now I will keep what I have been building. My reef-pi box is packed full right now. I have room for the PCA9865 and that’s about it. I am probably going to have to make a separate relay box. But I will see when my parts get here if I can fit everything. It would be nice if I can. And even nicer if a 3D printer finds its way under my tree
I wrapped some red tape on some of the white wires for a visual reference. The important thing is that everything in the circuit has been corrected and now I feel much better about the overall safety.
It is my understanding that the common wire just runs from the common of the sockets to the common of the power supply and the hot wires are what needs to be switched so that if you have a short it doesn't feed back through the circuit.
My choice of wire colors may be confusing because of the white wires I use to daisy chain the positive wire to the relays (that's why they have red tap on them).
I have the relays set up like the bottom picture in you diagram with the hot wires going to the sockets from the normally off positions on the relays.
No other reason for doing it this way than it seemed logical to have them wired this way.
I suppose if you wire them in the normally closed position you would be putting less stress on the relays that stay on all the time.
I am not an electrician so this is all new to me, its my first time ever messing with AC voltage. But looking at your pictures you have it wired like this
Which is backwards from all the other diagrams I have seen. I know @Erica-Renee had a reason for it but I didnt follow. Both ways will work as a switch and are switching the hot wire but does it matter which way its wired? I just want to make sure I do mine correct.
Half of my relays will be powered when off and the other half will be open when off.
I am not an electrician so this is all new to me, its my first time ever messing with AC voltage. But looking at your pictures you have it wired like this
Which is backwards from all the other diagrams I have seen. I know @Erica-Renee had a reason for it but I didnt follow. Both ways will work as a switch and are switching the hot wire but does it matter which way its wired? I just want to make sure I do mine correct.
Half of my relays will be powered when off and the other half will be open when off.
Certainly not trying to be argumentative, but I believe the center terminal is the common, at least every other relay board I have seen has the comm in center. So, NO-COMM-NC for each relay. Like I said earlier, the angry pixies don't care which way they go through the relay, you would only run into an issue if you tried to hook up to the NC terminal. There will never be a connection from NC to NO.Ok I hope this clears it up a bit.
The way I have my relays is the positive wire comes into the relay at the comm terminal from the 120v power supply and are daisy chained across all terminals so each relay is getting a supply from the 120v input.
Each individual socket is wired to the Normally Open terminal (silver screws). When the relay is closed it allows the 120v current to energize the socket. All 8 of the relays are wired the same way.
The common wire is wired directly across all sockets (green screws) and goes to the common of the power supply.
The ground is wired across all sockets and connected to the ground from the power supply.
From everything I've seen and heard this is the correct way to wire the circuit. I chose not to use the normally closed side of the terminals since I run my return pump separate from reef-pi just in case of a rpi failure.
I know the color of the wires on the hot circuit should have been red or black and that has caused some confusion.
Certainly not trying to be argumentative, but I believe the center terminal is the common, at least every other relay board I have seen has the comm in center. So, NO-COMM-NC for each relay. Like I said earlier, the angry pixies don't care which way they go through the relay, you would only run into an issue if you tried to hook up to the NC terminal. There will never be a connection from NC to NO.
This is awesome!! I have been wanting to build a reef pi since the beginning of the year. I was a little overwhelmed by the Linux programming aspect of it. I may just give it a shot now!
Wow!
I was just looking back at page #2 of this thread and realized that other than my dyslexic use of wire colors the first wiring attempt was correct.
Thanks for taking the time to take pics and document. Like I said I am very new to AC wiring and thats why I was so confused, it looked right the first time. I wouldnt say it was wrong so to speak just not standard like @ScottBrew had said. But regardless your thread has been a huge help to my build. Thanks again.