Relay's, BS2, and AC

Jonathan R

Hey guys,

I'm looking to use the BS2 to automate serveral things in my home using relays to either give or cut power to these certain·electronics. Now I personally, not being an eletrician am not comfortable hacking the 2 prong or 3 prong connectors off these electronics and soldering them to my relays. I have concerns that perhaps it may catch on fire or something along those lines. Can anyone think of a method that works exactly like a relay (meaning I can control it from a pin on my bs2 using high & low commands) yet can just plug devices into it?

ps it's important it's controlled via the BS2 - I have a GUI developed in vb that controls the BS2 via Serial.


[url=]\\Thanks[/url],
·Jonathan

Jon Williams

If you put a ULN2803 between your Stamp and this device you're good to go:

http://www.chauvetlighting.com/system/fixtures/sr8.html

We've connected it with to a Prop-1 (that has a ULN2803 on it).

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Jon Williams
Applications Engineer, Parallax

Bruce Bates

Jonathan -

Why go thorugh all that difficulty, when X-10 modules can be controlled directly from the BS-2 via XOUT through an ordinary X-10 interface? Then just use any of the myriad of pre-engineered, UL Approved, AC modules to do almost anything you want.

See the XOUT command in the PBASIC Stamp Manual for more details, including the specifications on the appropriate X-10 Interface to use. Why re-invent the wheel?

Regards,

Bruce Bates

Jonathan R

Awesome idea! That's exactly what I was looking for. Once I order this stuff I just have one question about wiring it up. The power line interface has 4 conductor connector -

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Power Line Interface: 1 2 3 4
Basic Stamp BOE: p0 vss vss p1

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In the manual the schematic shows for p0 there is a 10 k resistor to protect the stamp & VDDbut I'm not exactly sure how to hook it up. Is it pin1 on the power line interface to the 10k resistor to p0 on the stamp? Where does the VDD come in? I'm still very new at reading schematics unfortunately...

Thanks for your help guys

allanlane5

I highly recommend the "Firecracker" X10 module. This is a small module you can plug directly into your BS2 board (you'll have to add a DB-9 connector, with 'RTS', 'CTS', and ground wired in).

This gives you an RF-module that communicates with an RF-plug-in module, which then communicates with all your X10 stuff. This combines simplicity with flexibility. And you then don't have to mess with high-voltage AC at all -- the X10 modules do the dangerous stuff for you, safely.

JKL Tech

[noparse][[/noparse]quote="Qote: ps it's important it's controlled via the BS2 - I have a GUI developed in vb that controls the BS2 via Serial.]
Do you mind if we could take a look at the source code for that?

JKL Tech has been attempting to create an alternative coder for the Basic Stamp in the freeware script Just BASIC and the
Shareware script Liberty BASIC. We have failed due to the incorrect handling of the COM Transmissions.

Thanks!

-The JKL Tech team

Tom Walker

JKL,
I think that you will find your "quote" refers to a generic "serial communicator" and not a "coder". Programming a Stamp requires a very specific series of events and responses (which are Parallax's Intellectual Property). Fortunately, they do provide a tokenizer library which handles all of the low-level stuff which can be called by whatever IDE you are trying to design (in several styles for various OSs and platforms, no less...and for FREE!). Again, the GUI is probably just a serial control-type of communicator which requires the Stamp to already be running a program to interpret the "codes" sent to it and not a package to program the Stamp.

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Truly Understand the Fundamentals and the Path will be so much easier...