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How to monitor the status of your appliances using current sensors - Monitoring your washer |
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Written by Squiddy
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Sunday, 26 October 2008 13:32 |
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Page 4 of 4 Please only use this as a guide. I am not an electrician and you should always check with your local regulations regarding making these kinds of modifications to your home. Only follow this guide if you feel comfortable around electricity.
Unfortunately there is no access hole on the back of my washer so I could not easily get at the wiring inside without taking the whole back off. Instead of going to all of that trouble, I decided to build a quick universal box that I can plug any 110VAC appliance into.
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Materials Required:
* Mamac CT-800 Current Sensing Switches
* Enough single pair (300V or 600V rated) wire to go from the appliance to your automation panel
* One computer power supply cable and one female plug end
* Single gang box
* Marrettes, strain reliefs
Cut the computer power supply end off and wire the female connector on. Cut the cable in half.
Pop out the hole on each end of the box and screw in your strain reliefs.
Run one end of the power cable through each strain relief into the box.
Attach the green (ground) wires to the ground screw in the back of the box.
Run the black (hot) wire through the CT-800 and twist the two black wires together. Twist the white (neutral) wires together without running them through the CT-800.
Throw some marrettes on the wires to keep them together.
Drill a hole in the side of the box and run your belden status pair in. Connect it up to the contacts on the CT-800
Lay the CT-800 down inside the box. Everything fits quite nicely.
Connect up your washer or other appliance and run the belden pair back to a zone on your panel. I need to go buy a cover for the box.
I haven't come up with a way to put in a delay in the Elk on the washer status. As you know, the washer stops briefly between cycles. If you have the Elk announce each time the contacts close, then you will have 5 or 6 announcements each time you put your washing on. I only just received my elk last week and haven't got too deep into the programming. If I was programming a PLC, I would throw a 1 minute timer on the input and use the "Timer Done" bit to trigger the event. That way, if the washer stops for less than a minute (in between cycles), the timer will not expire and I won't get my announcement. I'm sure there must be a way to do this in the elk.
Edit: To write this in the Elk, you could go:
WHENEVER Washer Status (Zn 2) BECOMES SECURE
THEN TURN Output 100 ON FOR 1 MIN, RESTART TIMER IF RUNNING
WHENEVER Output 100 STATE IS TURNED OFF
THEN ANNOUNCE Miscellaneous 3 (vm241)
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 08 April 2009 13:47 |
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