switching all power sockets and lights

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marcelr
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Re: switching all power sockets and lights

Post by marcelr »

I don`t think my wife would NOT be amused if i used the kitchen as a workbench
I like the double negative, so she couldn't care less ;-)?
Mine doesn't mind either as long as the kitchen remains available for kitchen things when needed.

grtz,

marcelr
vincenttor
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Re: switching all power sockets and lights

Post by vincenttor »

Hahah Raymond,
sounds like me, i used to break in my dad's garage when i was 5 and use the soldering iron to get burns on my fingers.
It started with pushing buttons and magically let creditcards and other plastic cards dissapear.
Later on when the VCR broke down, they found out where the cards went to :roll:
I am not sure if its "hufter proof" the LED i use is just a simple 3528 smd strip with 60led per meter and this is the RGB version.
I bought all kinda of IP 65 and IP 20 LED in all kinds of colors and sizes when i had a small webstore in this stuff, got about 700 Meters left maybe a bit less at the moment , and going to use it in my own home ;)

The plastic holder is something i took with me when i was at work in the headquarters of the Rabobank in Utrecht.
Had to tear down some parts in the office and these strips where trash, suddenly thought it would be a great holder for my LED.
But you can buy them at Hornbach, i have to look at the type/size if you want to know.

About the kitchen ;), its my house and bought it on my own.
So there is nobody that tells me what to do or what not to do :) :twisted:

I did make some pictures when the light was a bit less outside to see more effect.
the height is ok i think if you compare how far the led shines with the front piece and without.
There is a but, the double sided tape i was using to stick the metal plate on it did not hold the plastic led holder....
probably because the double sided tape i was using is to old but i need to find another way to get this sorted because it is actually what i was expecting when there was a hot day like in the summer.
Most glue types become less sticky when heated at a certain point, since its on the highest place near the roof i expected it but not with these temps

So if there are people with ideas what brand i should buy, im open for suggestions.

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marcelr
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Re: switching all power sockets and lights

Post by marcelr »

So if there are people with ideas what brand i should buy, im open for suggestions.
Tesa Powerbond. Sticks like crazy.

grtz,

marcelr
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Re: switching all power sockets and lights

Post by vincenttor »

Thanks, i'll give that a shot.

edit: i have bought this tape and it seems to stick pretty good.
Hope that the coming days/months will be forgiving and it sticks on the metal plates.

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Re: switching all power sockets and lights

Post by vincenttor »

Thanks the tape works very good, even when i cut it with some scissors it sticks on them and is difficult to get it off ;)

Also done some work the weekend again, it takes so much time to connect all the LED and place the magnets,plates,led holders and the front of the cove.
But its coming there piece by piece.

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it's photographed with my phone and my other camera (nex5) hence the different kind of image/color.

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Need to place a piece of white wood in the most ugly piece of glass in the world, if you look closely it contains Chinese signs , reminds me a bit like the matrix haha.

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AshaiRey
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Re: switching all power sockets and lights

Post by AshaiRey »

vincenttor wrote:Need to place a piece of white wood in the most ugly piece of glass in the world, if you look closely it contains Chinese signs , reminds me a bit like the matrix haha.
Actually it tells you that anyone passing this entrance with a smile and good heart will receive fortune and health. But bad things will happen to those who remove this piece of glass. ..... :lol:
Bram
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Re: switching all power sockets and lights

Post by vincenttor »

I guess im doomed then Bram, haha :D :roll:
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Re: switching all power sockets and lights

Post by vincenttor »

Well a little update since the last post.
I didnt do much since i have allot of work going in and out of hotels even most saturdays i have been at work, what can i say, i can use the money :roll:

But, i did have a bargain with some nice real warm white colored LED spots.
I was shocked about the price they normally would cost in a store:
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led-verlichting.org/led-spot-700ma-25-w ... f392004d63
I will use these in the house on several places, and maybe if they can withstand a little bit of moisture i can hang a few outside (below the gutter)

Also i have "rebuild" a bezel/frame for of a pipo x8 computer with screen,
old one was broken.
its actually for a friend of mine, and not totally completed yet, he is looking for a nice wood sort that he likes and then he only use vernis to finish it.
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I did not have my heatpump system on for a while since i was not much there,
but when i wanted to turn on the system the red light was on, resulting in a error , anode was gone
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I needed to drain the tank but that did not go well since there was allot of build up chalk.
After about an hour i got it empty enough to open it up.

These are the anodes, just a aluminum rod , 1 with a small hole in it with a pressure switch on the end so when they are dissolved i get the red error light lighting up
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This is how i took them out.
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Also there has been not much maintenance if you ask me, and as i said before, the previous owner was a plumber.....
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So not much work to be done at this saturday but i did have a working system again.
Also i could test my FLIR camera, since i wanted to drill a few holes trough the ground/floor tiles but since i got floor heating and no drawing whatsoever i didnt do this yet.
Now i got it visible with the camera.
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Another thing i found is probably a leakage in the draining system for the rain water, the neighbor told me that when the house was build, they forgot to connect 1 of the pipes to the sewer.
Previous owner did connect it himself, but again , his job hasn't been a good one.
Big part of the sand has flushed away beneath the stones at my front door....
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Still got some work to do since i could not find the leak yet, under my house is a private swimming pool but now i know why.
I can see from the outside the plastic isolation foam and the water has probably flooded in because of this.
The water level is much lower then the water under my floor in the house so it has to be a leakage or something / somewhere ( yes i have checked my water meter but thats not it)

I bought some Chinese LED floodlights.
But as with most they come for 220-240 VAC with a CE approved sticker on them haha.
I have had 2 explosions of these sort of LED drivers that are placed inside a piece of isolation tape.
So i replaced that driver right away with a european one, and these are also self adjusting, with the ampere output and voltage.
These are also dimmable by 0 - 10V or with a pulse .
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Then i thought , hmm i can make it dimmable for outside, jst for fun ;)
Used the pwm ports on the arduino, but these are normally 5v output or maybe 3,3 v so i needed to make a little circuit and it worked after some searching on the internet and playing around :)
At first i could not get it right because i could not get it down to 0V but it stayed on 2V .
Now i got it working from 0 - 10 Volts.
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Made a prototype for a sort of break out board for the arduino mega.
the flat cable i have soldered at this picture on the board but the idea behind it was to use the male/female connectors so normal flatcables could be placed on the board.
So they are easy to replace or connect and since the arduino has also a i believe 42 pin connect on it this was the best solution.
At that time i didn't have the connectors yet and i needed this board but it did work.
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Small test board i made with some relays also for the arduino
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Another nice thing to know is that , i actually do not fully understand but well its ok :)
There is about 35/40 meter of LED strip on the side of the walls , warm white.
The chinese sellers say that the strips are using about 2A or 2.5A per 5 meter.
Let's say i have 40 meters, that would be then 40/5= 8
So 8 x 2A would be 16A right ?

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At 12.5 Volts it uses just 2 Amps ???
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I used another psu, this was a older transformer one peaked at 13.8 Volt
With a multimeter i measured a big higher amps but thats because of the 1,3 Volts more so logical that it draws more amps.

Anyway, its not a disaster if these lights stay on for a night by accident, not that its going to happen :D
And the light is not even that bad, enough sight even to do some reading but better for watching TV for example.

Another thing i could buy somewhere are a pile of automatic fuses, going from 2A to 120A for 2 / 3 phase and 220-400 Volts.
All are brand new ;)
got about 1600 pieces of them.
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Not so long ago i have been in contact again with Dave from the USA.
He has made some sort of plugin/script for homeseer that controls a arduino with a DMX shield and ethernet shield.
I am a sort betatester so very grateful for this that he wants to share it :)
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I do have one problem with the green board, it does not work...
Tested most options i could test, they do work if i set the jumpers to a certain number so there is a output signal
But it does not respond on the arduino/dmx device.

Luckily i got some 3 channel pcbs also, and those do work, strange thing is that i linked the arduino dmx master to the green 30 channel board from thta board i linked a cable to the 3 channel board.
i could turn the 3ch board on/off and program but the bigger board doesnt respond like it should .
Contacted the seller, he asked me first to test with another dmx master, i do not think it will matter since DMX is DMX, and the smaller board is working.
But i agreed , hopefully next week i can borrow a dmx mixer to test them otherwise i have to find boards that do work.....
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So have to test and see what comes out of this matter.
That didn't stop me from making 1 of the cabinets for my lights since i still need this.
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used the cnc router to puncture small holes , can't do steel with the machine, maybe it is possible but very slow.
So now i have the machine made small holes and i have done them all by hand :roll:
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It took me a while but well, its for a good cause.
Pity that the machine does not like steel otherwise it would me much more in 1 line, some are a bit next or off the line because the drill (loopt weg ?).
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Small Amp/watt/volt meter build in, that i am going to connect on the 12V source just for fun, also next to it a small temp meter.
Ofcourse i am going to be able to read this on the computer, but this is for when there is a emergency or broken controller.
I can turn on all my lights in the house just on a 12v battery ;) and to keep the draw low i can now see how much it uses and use the dimmers i a going to build in 2 x 30A.

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matt black and some silver with matt vernis/clearcoat on it.
then the fun part , place all the switches and led bezels.... pff been busy on the 24th from 9.30 till 15.30 haha and still not done because i did not received all the led bezels yet.
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Thats that for now, tomorrow ill post some of my other stuff i have been working on, not fully related with my house but still nice project that im learning from and i want to be able to use in my system.
AshaiRey
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Re: switching all power sockets and lights

Post by AshaiRey »

Amazing, really amazing! :shock:
And they say that i have wild goofy plans! Next time they say that i will point them to this thread. Next to you i look so normal.
Anyway you got a nice toolset to work with. That would make it a lot more fun to do.
Keep the postings coming but do the work first..
Thx!
Bram
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Re: switching all power sockets and lights

Post by r_255 »

Hahaha,

agree on the wild and goofy plans..! :D these things make me happy

i would not even try to cut these hole in steel and make a complete inlay panel from a softer material.
for drilling all these holes you do earn bonus points !

Any way you deserve credits for posting, and continuing your projects with loads of head wind.
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Re: switching all power sockets and lights

Post by vincenttor »

Haha thnx guys , fun to read someone is at least enjoying this :D
About the steel cabinet, i have had the same idea when i started but , then i thought hmmm.
PWM technique for dimming the LED, this usually tends to give allot of RFI.
And since another hobby i have is ham radio, i thought maybe if i "isolate" the cards in a steel cabinet, create a cage of Faraday hopefully the RFI is almost to fully gone.
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This is why i had to drill them all by hand haha.

And Bram, indeed with more tools its much more fun and easy to do.
Thinking about stuff differently how to build , how can i use my laser, or how can i use the router are two of the most things i start with :idea:
Well you are also probably right about "crazy" with this stuff, maybe i have done it a bit to much.
But most things that i start i do good or i don't :roll: and sometimes people think and ask , why are you doing something like this, create this much work for yourself?

Thats easy, because i just like what i do :D

Haha to make it even more looking like an addict. im sitting on my hotel bed with a arduino next to me haha :mrgreen:
vincenttor
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Re: switching all power sockets and lights

Post by vincenttor »

Haha, forgot that i added a anti image stealing script to my website back then ;)
Thats because someone was using my pictures on his site haha so i thought id make 1 hell of a ugly banner with some advertisement on it ;)

Anyway, i have done some work.
Placed a couple of camera's on my building :)
Also i made a support so i could hang the ptz on the corner of the garage to have a better view.

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But then i thought why not place it a big higher on top of the roof and i made some other supports
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Time to place the camera's
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Here is a video of the quality, and i am pretty satisfied actually.
At night its also ok, will make a video later at night mode.



2 other 4 Mp camera's hang on the wall, 1 has a 2.8 mm lens and thats the widest view, the other is 3.6mm that i need to adjust first.
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for a bigger image click this link : im1.shutterfly.com/ng/services/mediaren ... 25/enhance

I know, its messy but hey haha the camera's work ;)
using a old accespoint to receive the internet from my neighbors but since they have a very weak Wifi signal i had to place it behind the front door.
There's is at the opposite side of mine and there ziggo modem is also located there.
Still the signal is weak so i can't receive any signal inside the house, here i used a ubiquiti AP that i had laying around so i broadcast the signal again ;)

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The cabinet for my lights i have also done some work on, i ordered some blue diffused LED and warm white since that looks better and more easy to recognize what switchs is turning on what color.
So i have to wait on those LEDs and some big resistors 2watt and 3 watt to hang all those led's on instead of all a small separate resistor.
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Also managed to mount the plaster against the cove , bit of a hassle when you are working alone to get it all properly aligned but at about half of the room a friend of mine came to assist me and holding some of the plaster.
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Also received a package with some new toys in it.
I do need to build the table and supports for it but it's sort of ready to go.
This is a galvo co2 laser engraver with a 100W tube.
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r_255
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Re: switching all power sockets and lights

Post by r_255 »

omg... a 100w laser
whats next ?

if you need a good tubefan i am about to throw one away.... good be good to get those fumes out.
please keep us posted about the laser, as i am curious how and what.
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Re: switching all power sockets and lights

Post by vincenttor »

Well , im not sure how big it has to be since it does tend to go fast and produce allot of smoke.






I actually have been stupid, since that with a 100W tube you better cool the water thats cooling the tube.
I did not order a cooling machine :roll:
And i need a laser combiner so i can add a red visible laser source to the beam that engraves to see the square where it will engrave.
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Re: switching all power sockets and lights

Post by ThinkPad »

Great topic, i always enjoy reading it!

Why did you choose for the panel with all those switches? It looks cool for sure, but isn't a iPad mounted on a wall on a central place in your home more handy?

Now waiting for your next post starts, i'm curious to see that laser in action. The videos look promising, the device is crazy fast!
Be sure to take safety steps however, good anti-laser glasses and good fume extraction.
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