Driving Relays

[toymakr000]

Last year I hooked up a relay box on one channel of a CTB 16 D. It consisted of 4 Allen Bradley control relays. Idid this for all of the static portions (20A) of my display. When I did this it hummed VERY Loud. So I disconnected it and hooked it to my porch light circuit controlled manually.

Well good news! After discussions on Planet Christmas there were some suggestions of adding a light bulb (resistive load) to the coil circuit. So what I did was hook one of the deer (300 mini's) in the relay coil circuit to a channel on the controller. It worked like a charm! no buzzing! When I disconnect the deer It starts buzzing again. So if you have a relay and don't want it to buzz add a resistive load.

[cenote]

Thanks, I adding relays next year:D

[Donald Puryear]

I have been using a Digital I/O board for the last 2 years. This gives me 24 simple on-off circuits. Saves a couple of $$$$$$. Plus I use this board with my halloween Displays.

[Skyrocket]

Donald,

Which DIO board are you using? I am getting ready to try some sequencing using digital outputs ans solid state relays (SSRs).

I would really like to come up with a solution for locating the DIO remote from the PC. That could really cut down on the amount of cable I would have to use.

Thanks,

Roger

[Donald Puryear]

I had the same problem. My DIO board sits in a ISA slot in my computer, it has a 80 pin cable to a relay board with plug in relays. I then ran cat 5 cables out to relay boxes outside. This works but your right it takes a lot of wire. Another solution I came up this year was to take a 16 Channel Direct Current (DC) Controller Board. (I had this for Halloween) and drive solid state relays. I bought 2 channel 40 amp solid state relays on ebay for 2$ each. Dan stated he is releasing next year a DIO board that will operate on the 485 loop