Status: Staying Home, managing our resources. Building up a smart home with 10 NodeMCU’s and counting.
I have 8 high power relays, four 16 Bit A/D lines, five remote controlled outlets and two temperature/humidity sensors on one interface. (So Far)
Plans: Keep putting these things together and working out the bugs, it took 6 hours to figure out how to connect four relays last night! I also got a blood pressure cuff to check on the ole Heart during this stressful time.
Narrative: Didn’t sleep very well, spent most of the morning putting my relay module on my NodeMCU. I finally got it to work about 6AM this morning.
The DHT22 was equally difficult because I bought a Chinese fake on Amazon. The fake looked more like a DHT11 but I couldn’t get that to work either. The data line is pulled low by the NodeMCU and when it lets go, the DHT22 sends the digital data immediately afterwards.
I really like this little Digital Storage O Scope, it’s less than 3″ and is perfect for grabbing a short data burst.
The grass was getting a little long so I mowed the front yard today with my EGO Electric mower. The grass was a little wet, but otherwise easy to mow.
I’ve run DC wire to most of the rooms in the homestead using a red/black 12AWG wire terminated with a 45A Power Pole connector. The NEC incorporated DC wiring that declares the black wire as “Hot”, the common (close to ground) connection is White even for DC. My best option is to run “White” wires alongside the red/black ones. I might be able to split the voltage so that Red is +12 and Black is (-)12 volts. The following diagram shows the 1000′ of red/black wire already in the attic.
I’ve bought 1000′ of 5 x 18AWG thermostat wire that I intend on using to replace the low current end points. (Class 1) I’ll pull back the 12AWG and use it for high power distribution. (Class 2 < 100W, Class 3) 18AWG should be fine for the IR illuminators on the cameras. (Which I am having an issue with EMI on the Ethernet cables.) The power wires are in the same conduit as the Ethernet cable. I may change that when I replace the cameras since they have caused me so much trouble.
The other “Idea” I had was to send split phase 117VAC (59V+59V) to end points so that commercial grade power supplies could be used. (They are quieter than the low voltage variety.) NEC only allows me to send split phase if the power is “Inherently limited”, or in my case from a DC to AC inverter. (There’s no way to start a fire because the low output current from the Inverter is a fail safe.)
Again there’s two ways to accomplish this. (I’ve purchased the hardware already.) One way is to use another transformer to split the phases if they can be unbalanced. The second way is to center the output transformer using two tiny transformers. (Unbalanced current will appear on those tiny transformers, so it needs to be kept very low.)
Tomorrow: Monday, get prepared to go to the grocery store at 08:00 on Tuesday.
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