Need momentary switch contact for shades!

[Deane Johnson]

I have added a Hunter Douglas PowerRise shade to my home theater setup that blocks off light from a hallway. Hunter has a Connection Interface that uses two momentary switch contacts to operate the shade either up or down. What they do is simply short the common to one of two terminals, "up" or "down". Their diagram shows a single pole, double throw momentary pair of push buttons. In reality, so long as the contact is made between common and an appropriate terminal, it's off and running. The stop is built into the shade.

I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas on how this might be interfaced with my Elve software. I suppose it takes a couple of relays, one for making contact for each direction. They should probably be interlocked so they don't both make contact at the same time, but I don't know if this would be harmful or not.

Momentary switch contact is rather basic in home automation, so I thought someone might have an idea on approaching this. I'm not familiar with what mechanical products might be on the market that would fit this need on a reasonable basis.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Deane

 

[mustangcoupe]

Im thinking of some I/O board or elk relays use 3 of them, one for each switch, and the third will select which relay use both the NC and NO terminals). so you'd need to throw two of them at once to go one direction, but that would isolate the other switch and make it not possible to make connection.

 

[Deane Johnson]

Interesting thought Todd. It started me thinking that I need to find out from Hunter Douglas if these have to be momentary, or if one direction can be making contact at all times. If so, I could use the ELK style relay with the N/O section for DOWN, and the N/C position for UP and do it with one relay.

I'm pretty sure the shade has sufficient stops built in that it may not have a problem with the "switch" being on all the time.

I have 4 spare relays in my Ocelot Relay 8, but I'm trying to move everything over to Elve as I go and get away from the Ocelot. However, John has recently announced an Ocelot driver in the future, so I may need to rethink that.

Deane

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

Interesting thought Todd. It started me thinking that I need to find out from Hunter Douglas if these have to be momentary, or if one direction can be making contact at all times. If so, I could use the ELK style relay with the N/O section for DOWN, and the N/C position for UP and do it with one relay.

I'm pretty sure the shade has sufficient stops built in that it may not have a problem with the "switch" being on all the time.

I have 4 spare relays in my Ocelot Relay 8, but I'm trying to move everything over to Elve as I go and get away from the Ocelot. However, John has recently announced an Ocelot driver in the future, so I may need to rethink that.

Deane

WHAT!! Sacrilege! NEVER give up your Ocelot! I have yet to find a more reliable device with the timer capabilities this unit has.

If an HA software package does not support the Ocelot, you need to switch to one that does. I would do this before giving up on my trusty Ocelot.

I use the Ocelot with it’s timers to give a momentary output for things like my garage door remote (have a how-to on this) plus other applications. If you already have a RLY8XA unit, then you are already set!

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

Also, Elk makes a good timer relay product, but it's expensive and as MC said above, you might need two of them, though you could trigger them with a voltage output.

 

[Deane Johnson]

BSR, your words are wise. Ocelot is indeed a very reliable product and has (is) served me well. However, ADI's inattention to upgrading it to the 21st Century forced me to look for expanded approaches. Ocelot is stuck in the X-10 era, and the world has moved on.

In moving on, I discovered Elve software, which is amazingly reliable, even during it's beta period. Even more so than Ocelot. Surprised me. It's very well mannered. Runs on my PC that has heavy graphics work going on, and a lot of general hacking around by me, but never glitches. I don't even know it's on the computer.

But, the good news is that an Ocelot driver is coming to Elve. Meantime, I'm triggering my Ocelot with X-10 from Elve and it's working very well.

One of the things I like about Elve over Ocelot relative to timer usage is that it will do tenths of a second, while I think Ocelot is limited to a 1 second minimum, I'm not sure.

I appreciate all of the comments that have been made in this thread.

 

[Deane Johnson]

Just an update, I've had the new Elve driver for Ocelot in place for several months now and it is very reliable.