[Lab] Electronics help

[Chris De Groot]

I would have a look at one of these from Robotshop.

http://www.robotshop.com/ca/productinfo.aspx?pc=RB-Dfr-170&lang=en-US
http://www.robotshop.com/ca/productinfo.aspx?pc=RB-See-102&lang=en-US

They are pretty inexpensive, and ready to go, they have a reasonable design to ensure it is a little harder to fry your arduino or computer (opto isolation etc). This means you are right back at being able to focus on software and creativity that way.

You could not buy the parts for the price they sell and ship the shields for I recon. The only limitation is that the use of relays means something is either on or off. Which I think is fine for solenoids and small pumps. You can switch a very wide range of voltages and powers including the 12v for most solenoids to even some mains, though I suggest you avoid using mains if you are not yet experienced in safety precautions in developing with voltages that can hurt.

Cheers C.



From: lab-bounces at artengine.ca [mailto:lab-bounces at artengine.ca] On Behalf Of Adam Hill
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2012 9:17 AM
To: Toby Murray
Cc: Lab at artengine.ca
Subject: Re: [Lab] Electronics help

Hey Toby,

posting the model numbers of the valve's and pump would help to get specific help. In the meantime, this thread<http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,10845.0.html> has some good guides in it.

Good luck,
-a

On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 12:32 AM, Toby Murray <murray.toby at gmail.com<mailto:murray.toby at gmail.com>> wrote:
Hey everyone,

I new here and dropped by the ModLab last week just to poke around, and it seems like a pretty cool place. I have a rather large project in mind and I've run into some difficulties with my complete lack of hardware/electronics knowledge. To that end, I was wondering if anyone had some free time/brain space to help me plan things out and give general guidance.

I have a rudimentary understanding of the Arduino environment from the software side, I don't see any problems there, and an almost non-existent understanding from the hardware side. With that in mind, I'm looking to control some water. I already have an Arduino, a tank, two solenoid valves, and a couple pumps to play with. My issues revolve around upping both the current and the voltage of the Arduino to be able to toggle the solenoids/contactor of appropriate size for the pumps (if this is even the proper way to do it? Went to Active Components and they had nothing that I thought I needed, which made me second guess myself). I think I've come up with a possible solution from mixing and matching specs I find on the internet, but seeing as I've almost no idea what I'm doing I'd like to go over it with someone who's done this kind of stuff before. Especially before I go buying random extremely specific components...

To that end, I'm putting out this call for help. Anybody feel like jumping in on this? Doesn't have to be in person; email, instant message, texts, phone -  it all works.

Any help is appreciated!
    - Toby Murray

_______________________________________________
Lab mailing list
Lab at artengine.ca<mailto:Lab at artengine.ca>
http://artengine.ca/mailman/listinfo/lab

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://artengine.ca/pipermail/lab/attachments/20120912/0ad001db/attachment-0001.htm>