I’m a programmer and have a set of traffic lights in working order that have 3 x 3amp 12v bulbs and I am looking for a way to control it from a systems monitor.
I’m fairly sure that velleman.eu/distributor/prod … ?id=351980 can do the job of allowing me to communicate my intentions from the computer side of things but I am not sure at all how to go from the outputs on this into activating the bulbs on the traffic light. The traffic light itself is a simple 2 wires per bulb setup.
Can anyone point me at something that would allow me to figure out the electronics side of things or even just shed some light on how I’d go about doing it?
The K8055 can do what you asking however you will need to supply relays since the outputs of the K8055 are limited to 100mA and your lights need 3Amps.
If you are just wanting to control the lights with your PC an esier way might be the K8090 (kit) or the VM890 (assembled) you can see more from the links below.
My kit arrived today and I put it together. I can verify that, when connected to the mains and usb, the relay lights are activated when the appropriate USB signal is sent. That’s all fine.
I’ve wired the traffic lights to the relay outputs and, unfortunately, nothing happens. I’m fairly sure the outputs are working given the test LEDs are coming on but is there an easy way to check this?
I’ve got a sneaking feeling that it’s because the board outputs DC and the lights require AC? I can also verify that the lights work off a regular mains plug (I shoved the blue and brown wires for the red light into a regular mains plug and plugged in it, and it lit up bright as daylight). If this is the case, is there a way to extend the system so that it controls AC feed through the blue and brown wires for each of the three traffic light bulbs?
I have to commend Velleman on their kit though, I’ve only vaguely soldered something long in the past and have zero experience with putting together electronics kits. Bearing that in mind I picked up the Velleman’s kitchen timer for practice and had no issues with either kit.
Anyway back on topic, to recap:
Velleman kit appears to work fine
Traffic light bulbs do not light up
Traffic light bulbs appear to be AC
Outstanding questions:
Does the Velleman K8090 board output DC?
If so, is there a way to get it working for my purposes of feeding AC into the traffic lights?
Are you hearing a click coming from each of the relays when activated / deactivated?
The K8090 uses dry contacts (relays).
No power comes out if the relays.
Someone made a really nice mini engineering guide.
In there they cover the proper way to connect a relay.
However in their example they are using mains if you bulbs require 12vAC then you will need to use a transformer.
Well, I tried it. Neutral plug into Relay 1, Neutral red light into Relay 2, Live red light into plug. Plugged it all in. Red was off as expected. Ran the demo app, clicked on Relay 8 and the red light appeared!
Now, I have next to no experience with this so I am going to ask “Is there anything fundamentally wrong with what I have just set up?”
On your first post you said that you have 3 lights that draw 3 amps at 12 volts.
I am assuming that these are AC lights.
So this would mean that you are using a transformer to take the voltage from 110volts or 220volts what ever your mains voltage is down to 12 volts.
Then from the transformer it goes to the lights.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
Lets just work with on light the red one.
It has 2 wires going from the transformer to the light.
Cut one wire and connect those ends to relay 1.
When you engage relay 1 the light will turn on.
Then just do the same for the yellow Relay 2 and the green relay 3.
Thanks Wrong Way, that’s confirmed that I was doing it the right way. The transformer is already built into the traffic light, the wires are just regular mains neutral and live, so I wired this all into a mains plug and put the relay in the middle of the neutral wire.
It’s BRIGHT And it also confirms that I put the Relay kit together just fine too which I’m pleased about! The front of the manual scared me a little with it’s “363 solder points” “5 - Advanced” warnings.
Now I get to use it as a system status notifier which is going to be amazing.
What I basically did was use my understanding of your initial post and that pdf but I wasn’t 100% sure I was correct until I saw your other post
I think Velleman did a very nice job with this kit and the instructions.
As far as building the kit and wiring it up is no problem.
The programming is a different story.
Fortunately the instruction look like they are written for beginners (me)
Because of your post now I have a project to try
Yeah, it is a real traffic light. I work for a borough council and we asked for a rotated out of use traffic light if there were any spare and it turned up.
I don’t expect as many problems with the programming side of things as it is my day job after all We’ll find out!
And it also confirms that I put the Relay kit together just fine too which I’m pleased about! The front of the manual scared me a little with it’s “363 solder points” “5 - Advanced” warnings.