Odd Problem with 120v Relay and B2 with BOE.?

Brann Fenix · 2006-09-09 02:58

Let me start with the things I know and what I and the parts I am using.

1. My power is a 9v 300mA wall wart connected to the BOE.
2. I am using MPS2222A NPN Transistors.
3. The relay is a Gordos GBI 5600-601 240 vac 40 amp solid state relay that turns on with 3 to 30VDC.
4. I have everything hooked like the attached drawing posted by PJ Allen I found on another relay post.
5. I am trying to use the BOE and this little relay board I built to drive 4 of these 40amp relays and 2 Gordos 10amp relays.
6. I this is my first time working with relays and transistors…

Let me start off by saying that I’m sure there must be a ton of better/easier ways to do this if I ordered a few parts online. But, I have a Radio Shack 2 blocks from my house and I would rather work a little longer and harder to not have to sit and wait on the mail man. With that said here is my story…

I grabbed some transistors, resistors, screw terminals, and one of those little PCB boards. I then soldered a pin header to the PCB in order to connect to the BOE neatly and then hooked up my transistors like the drawing. Now, I connected my power to the Vss and Vdd sockets on the BOE and my transistor circuits are on pins 0 to 5. I pretty much have 6 transistors circuits living on that PCB between my BOE and the relays. I first tested my circuit with 6 LEDs before hooking it up to the relays. I planned on using the LEDs to show the status on the relays. The 6 LEDs all worked with my code and everything seemed great… until I noticed they seemed to flicker a little when I kept them on. I checked the outputs on my board that I build and all the solder points for shorts. I read pretty much 5v on all the screw terminals connect to the LEDs and found no shorts or wiring errors. They still flickered a little which was bugging me… I then hooked up my Solid State Relays and did some testing. I had the same stupid flicker, but this time it would be my 120v light bulb I was testing with rather than a little LED. I took out my meter and check all the relays on the BS2 side and everything was getting a steady 4.80v~5v DC which did not seem to be the problem… I then checked the current that the relays were drawing thinking maybe it was my power supply…. It was about 30mA per relay which puts me at like 180mA for all 6 relays.

I now officialy have no clue what could be causing this flicker and I humbly request to be whacked upside the head with the knowledge stick and get past this stupid problem heh… As always please let me know if I can provide anymore info or pictures… I’ll be near the computer messing with this most of the weekend…

Thanks in advance,
Brann

willthiswork89 · 2006-09-09 03:34

does it sound like a machine gun? Ive had this issue i went to radio shack and got three micro mini relays radio shack item number 275-240 and tried powering all three and they made this DADADADADADADA Noise, basically the current draw was too much for the microcontroller to handle and the board was resetting its self, add a speaker and apon initialization put a little beep to recognize that its turned on and functioning, if you hear it beep continuously thats why.

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Brann Fenix · 2006-09-09 06:58

Nope the relays make no sound and I grabbed them from ebay a while back. They work fine if I hooked up a 9v battery, but sadly the BS2 makes everything flicker [noparse]:([/noparse] it's like the voltage drops for 1ms then comes back on and it flickers maybe 3ish times a second... very odd [noparse]:([/noparse] I bet it is something goofy th0...

Bruce Bates · 2006-09-09 12:24

Brann -

Less likely it's the voltage available and more likely the current available. Check the loads of all these relays, vs. the ampacity of the paower supply you're using todrive them.

If this "flickering" is coming at or near the end of your program, that it another matter entirely.

Regards,

Bruce Bates

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Brann Fenix · 2006-09-10 20:01

It was my code!

I was just testing if they powered up so I used this code:

' {$STAMP BS2}
' {$PBASIC 2.5}

HIGH 0
HIGH 1
HIGH 2
HIGH 3
HIGH 4
HIGH 5
end

Stupid me I should of learned something from working with my LCD a few months back... If I used the END command it would print this funky character on the screen every second or so... This was my flicker problem! If I ran my stupid little test in a loop... or my real code which uses loops the flicker goes away [noparse]:)[/noparse]

Thanks for kick starting my brain Bruce!

Odd Problem with 120v Relay and B2 with BOE .?

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Odd Problem with 120v Relay and B2 with BOE.?