Great thread,
@cmc0619! I stumbled across your YouTube video first, and ended up here to see more updates since that was posted (my first TFP post).
I'm very new to this space (relay acronyms, RS-485 standard, etc), and had a handful follow-up questions to better understand the current state of your project. Many of these refer to the
last posted image update, which I realize was a work-in-progress at the time.
1. Related to the GFCI protection, my understanding is the Altech GFL series have a 15mA tolerance (intended for industrial purposes), whereas residential GFCI uses a ~5mA tolerance (shouldn't trip <4mA, should trip >=6mA). I don't know if this is significant in practice, but it had me considering other options, like protecting the entire pool control box through a ~30A 240v GFCI breaker off a main/subpanel of the house (not within the pool controller box in DIN rail form -- which you've noted can be $$$). Like you, my pool was built before the NEC had some of these standards in place ('94), and today my equipment does not have any existing GFCI protection. I could see how a central GFCI breaker covering many devices could make it more challenging to diagnose a trip issue, but I'm hopeful that using standard MCBs within the control box would provide some ability to isolate components, assuming the trip is easy to reproduce. Also, I've seen
some discussion around GFCI+VSP being problematic, but it's not clear to me yet why that is (based on my cursory research of GFCI behavior .. protection against current leakage). Anyway, I was curious if you had considered holistic GFCI protection outside of the control box, and decided against it.
2. From your last image update, it looks like your AD ice-cube relays are interacting with your gray WAGO relays. I was curious what scenario you were going to be handling with this design (mainly looking at the pair on right side in the image, although the same exists on the left side). My imagination is limited to thinking about your Pi hat relays toggling the WAGO/AD relays for larger voltages, so the WAGO-AD wiring is throwing me off.
3. I ended up on your YouTube video from looking up "DIY Pool Controller", based on interest in getting some actuators on each of my valves running them on some interval. Without getting too deep in the weeds, I decided I'd like to be able to set the actuators at some in-between state in the valves rotation (not just at the poles), and my plan was to use the (relatively cheap) intermatic actuators, each w/ 2 relays to control a time-based rotation. It seems like a hack, and worst case both relays end up on due to some error. Was curious where you stand with deciding on an actuator approach (I'm assuming IntelliValve+485) and if there was anything significant that steered you in that direction.
4. Regarding the 24VAC transformer, I saw the discussion related to the original Amazon transformer (green board, blue box) being underpowered, leading to you buying the bulkier RS unit. I'm tempted to get a
non-DIN transformer and mount it on
a random DIN bracket, but I'm open to being dissuaded if my desire to save $ and stay compact has me shortsighted. Anything stand out as a bad idea here? Seems like there might be a safety concern here with the lack of an enclosure.
Really appreciate the detail that has gone into this thread -- super helpful! I need to give a few other's threads a read as well, seeing as they're doing similar things (and maybe answering some of these questions).