Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Richard Farnsworth <[email protected]> · Thu, 25 Jul 2013 15:49:45 -0500 (CDT)

The problem with the commercial wireless wall outlet controllers is they are somewhat prone to false triggering. There is generally no cleverness in the protocol and you really should only use them for applications that are very non critical. For example, I have one in my home I can control a table lamp with quite nicely by speaking into my wireless intercom. 

Ahem..... I can also tell you stories of large scale commercial controls stations  that I tamed with the domestic timers that you can buy for $5 or so - intended to turn your lights on at predetermined times to scare the burglars away... We couldn't get the controllers we were using to run reliably over the long term, so we used them to issue a reset (by dropping power for five minutes) once every 24 hours..

Cheers

Richard

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Gomella (NIH/NHLBI) [F]" <[email protected]>
To: "Maren Purves" <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2013 5:52:42 PM
Subject: RE: Simple wireless light controlled through EPICS?

Yes you are right. I guess I'm trying to find something along the lines of a wireless switch that can be easily integrated with EPICS. This is probably trivial for most, the issue here is I cant really run wires room to room (needs to be somewhat temporary solution) and I have multiple doors that need covering (and little experience with EPICS and hardware engineering)

If it were one door, to be honest I'd probably just put an old laptop on a table next to it and just have it on our local wifi network reading out the PV value to a fullscreen display... 

Mark's suggestion seems the easiest to implement, but I'm not sure I can run the wires.  The less elegant option is for me to purchase something like this http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000G80V28 and press it every time I turn the x-ray on or off. 

Thanks,
Andrew
________________________________________
From: Maren Purves [[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2013 6:29 PM
To: Gomella, Andrew (NIH/NHLBI) [F]
Cc: Mark Rivers; [email protected]
Subject: Re: Simple wireless light controlled through EPICS?

Maybe I'm off, but IMHO you need a switch (that you plug the light
into) with a (serial or otherwise) control rather than the light
being controlled itself?

Maren

Gomella, Andrew (NIH/NHLBI) [F] wrote:
> The interlock came hardwired into our x-ray controller box. It's value can be read with the asyn stream driver and is a BO variable that reads whether the key is in the armed position or not. I was hoping to use this value to trigger lights on or off.  Unfortunately I can't modify anything with the x-ray controller, so I figure there has to be some sort of USB light on the market that runs on serial commands? Or maybe such a specific thing does not exist and requires a micro-controller and some work to make.
> ________________________________________
> From: Mark Rivers [[email protected]]
> Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2013 6:02 PM
> To: Gomella, Andrew (NIH/NHLBI) [F]; [email protected]
> Subject: RE: Simple wireless light controlled through EPICS?
>
> How is your interlock done?  Simple relays or with a PLC?  Our laser interlocks here at APS use inexpensive PLCs, and they directly operate the warning lights outside the enclosure.
>
> Mark
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Gomella, Andrew (NIH/NHLBI) [F]
> Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2013 4:57 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Simple wireless light controlled through EPICS?
>
> Anyone have any suggestions for a simple way to control a light with EPICS? It does not need to be bright, even a small LED will do. Basically I'm trying to have indicators on several doorways to show the current status of the interlock on our x-ray source (which is already a PV).
>
> In the ideal scenario it would be connected to wifi so that ethernet/usb cables do not need to be run everywhere. I was thinking of maybe trying to get the "Belkin WeMo Home Automation Switch" to work with EPICS, it is basically a power plug that connects to WiFi. But it is probably easier to find some USB LEDs and run cables.
>
> I know some beamlines at APS have EPICS controlled lights, so wondering if anyone has ideas?
>
>
> Thanks!
> Andrew
>

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System