- Sep 22, 2011
- 211
Re: I created an App to control pool equipment with smartpho
Craig,
Good point on the 240v issue... that hadn't occurred to me. According to the specs on my main pool pump, the amps exceed the max on the relays, so I can't go that route. I'm thinking of hooking the extra two relays into (1) my landscape lighting and (2) my water feature, so I can turn them off and on with my phone. The landscape lighting would probably be less useful, but the water feature would be nice so I could turn it off when I'm not outside (as opposed to running it 24/7, like I do now).
Kevin
CraigMW said:kodiak1120 said:rdhetrick said:This looks like a project I would really enjoy!! Thanks for posting it!!
Are your pump motors 120v or 240v? Have you bypassed the intermatic timers altogether and use the Raspberry Pi to control the on/off time everyday?
Hi... the pumps are 120v, but the relays can switch up to 16A at 240v, so either way it would work. Good question on the timers... I haven't actually decided yet. When I first set out on this project, my plan was to bypass the intermatic timers entirely and use a javascript interface so I could set the on/off times via my webapp. I've since backed off of that idea since I'm kind of favoring the simplicity of the intermatic timers. I may end up just splitting the line from the main breaker and running one of the hots to the timer and one to a relay... that way I could still use the timers, but I could manually turn the pumps off and on from my phone if I wanted (like when you just want to run the pumps for a little while in the evening after adding chlorine or if you have a water feature hooked up to a return jet). Right now the pumps are not hooked up to the relays.
Kevin
You could indeed switch a 240V pump with those relays, but I would think there would be a safety issue with SPST relays. For 240V, you combine two 120V hots, and only one side would be switched by the relay. This would mean that the unswitched side would be at 120V over neutral/ground. This would certainly be a safety issue if anyone were to contact one of those hot wires when they thought the system was "off." It would be better to use a DPST relay so that both hot legs would be disconnected from the pump, heater, etc.
BTW, what a very cool system. I had thought about doing this myself a couple of years ago, but didn't want to have to do all of the hardware work. With an RPi and one of these relay boards, it is amazing to see what can now be done. Now to just throw in some sort of flow meter, pressure sensors, pH and ORP sensors and you could truly have a Trouble Free Pool!
Craig,
Good point on the 240v issue... that hadn't occurred to me. According to the specs on my main pool pump, the amps exceed the max on the relays, so I can't go that route. I'm thinking of hooking the extra two relays into (1) my landscape lighting and (2) my water feature, so I can turn them off and on with my phone. The landscape lighting would probably be less useful, but the water feature would be nice so I could turn it off when I'm not outside (as opposed to running it 24/7, like I do now).
Kevin