Wireless relay control of relays

Gareth Branwyn says: "In this adafruit video, Limor demonstrates how to set up Xbee modules to wirelessly control both standard-type and latching relays."

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Crispinus211

What?!
Takuan

you never had the joy of discovery as a child of things actually WORKING? It turns into quiet satisfaction as an adult – no where near as good.
Kimmo

Strictly speaking, she doesn’t demonstrate how to do it, merely that she has done it.
Anonymous

â™¥â™¥â™¥
Limor completely rocks my world.
I have a buddy coming round in few moments to assist with transistor matching so I can start my x0xb0x.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Anonymous,
  
  I had to upgrade you to â™¥s because you invoked unintentional html.
Anonymous

@Kimmo – the schematic is on the site if you follow the link to adafruit…
Drew from Zhrodague

Hooray Limor! Nice to see your fruits on BB every so often.

We’ve had mention of some of your neat projects at our Hackerspace Pittsburgh, http://www.hackpittsburgh.org – Almost time for POV LED fun with Ardionos!
Anonymous

Limor is completely hot.

@Takuan – You should check out her site, she has some very easy to assemble kits (just basic soldering) that do cool things, like the tv b gone. Satisfying to assemble, and fun to impress friends with. An her arduino kit is, i think, the best one out there.

I’m using her wave shield in a project now, and read about the wave bubble for additional coolness outside my reach.

http://www.ladyada.net/make/
Crispinus211

@1,3 Taukuan:

I’m not saying What?! to you, but to the post itself. I don’t understand a word of it! MY childhood discoveries were not of this order.
Anonymous

So, what’s the difference between a latching relay and a regular one? So long as it’s at least DPDT (AFAIK they all are) then you can make any relay a latching one…

PS: For the first time ever I’ve failed the captcha… Both words were unintelligible, so I gave my best guess for each. I was told I failed the turing test and was booted back to the original posting, my text was cleared from the textbox. Someone might want to look into this at some point… Were I not a random useless anonymous poster my suggestions might carry more weight, but really, I’d have hoped it would at least preserve my entry instead of eating my text.
Takuan

what are you waiting for? Get down to the local electronics shop and get a kit!
Takuan

start with something simple and give it to a kid after you are ready to move up.
http://www.escience.ca/hobby/RENDER/0001/C9/3056/12102.html
Takuan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relay
Blondy

Don’t forget to put a diode across the windings of the relay to prevent the back emf from blowing out the solid state components when the relay de-energizes.

Love,
Blondy
sisyphus321

XBee works on 2.4 GHz. I assume this is the 2.4 GHz ISM band which is also used by WiFi. Any ideas on how/if XBee plays nicely with WiFi?
Takuan

I love this stuff! Even if I never get around to using that particular thing, I enjoy thinking about what some tinkerer somewhere is developing. Makes we wish I were twelve again.
Anonymous

#4 actually, i -do- show how to do it, but BB did not link to the original blog post tutorial which is here:
http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2009/04/21/using-xbees-to-control-relays/

#5 there is a diode across the relay, its visible in the preview screenshot, wrapped around on the righthand side
allenrl

You can find solid state relays for cheap these days… If you can’t find one that’s “latching”, you can always use a flip-flop to make it latch.
InsertFingerHere

First, I am _SO_ glad they showed the cat at the end. I thought a certain substance was adversely affecting my perception.

Second, first time I’ve heard of a latching relay, and I’m in love. Perfect device for battery operated do-dads. And best of all, they are immune to power loss. It’s like a 1-bit flash memory cell, only it can connect to line voltage.

Third, some relays have the diode built-in across the coil. Might save room in the final project.