whatuusay1
Member
First off - Thank you all in advance - this is my first electrical project(I'm very confortable with electronics - but this is the first real project I'm putting together) and your time and assistance would be greatly appreciated.
I've got an interesting problem... monitoring the usage of the restoom at work. We have probably 60-70 employees sharing 2 restrooms (1 mens / 1 womens) as well as many others from other floors (our sales department likes to visit... something about a single stall). Anyways - so as you can imagine its quite common to get up and go over to the restroom (which is down the hall) and find out its occupied. This gets old when it happens 3-4 tmes a day. So - surely this can be automated right?
I did some searching and found a similar project online called the ipotti - http://stuffandymakes.com/2011/03/03/ipotti%E2%84%A2-released/
Basically this guy has a similar issue and solved it by monitoring the status of the lights in the bathroom - to an ethernet controller that his office Mac's check.
This is essentially what I'm trying to accomplish - although we have a lighting system in the building and we cant be turning the lights on and off a hundred times a day so I had to come up with a different option for determining occupancy. I figured the next best thing would be a PIR to monitor occupancy right? I know i could try and monitor the door and what not but i think that might be hard to make accurate - since you might have someone exit and enter at the same time.
I remember reading quite a bit about the WebControl PLC boards on cocoon some time ago and per the documenation below the aux input has analog and digital inputs you can monitor - in addition to temp/humidity sensors. My thought was to connect the PIR alarm contacts to one of these analog inputs. The documentation indicates I should be able to use GET/WGET to read status of input and output. So i went ahead and purchased the WebControl and a fairly cheap PIR - Optex RX-40PI. The end product I'm hoping for will be a Windows 7 Widget that queries the Webcontrol status of the analog input (0 or 1) for occupancy At least that was my thought.
Ultimately where I'm stuck now is i figured I could just attach the alarm contacts of the PIR to the analog input on the WebControl board but now I'm not sure - the PIR says 'N.C. 28V DC 0.2A max.' on the alarm output - which i know is normally closed but I'm stuck on the 28v DC statement.. I had assumed Pin 4 (GND) and Pin 1 (input 1) - can anyone confirm I'm reading that correctly? are the voltage statements cause for concern?
The WebControl says the analog inputs can range between 0-10vdc - so will it not work with this PIR? I'm sure this is a simple question but i'd rather not burn up a $35 WebControl panel by overlooking something this simple. If this PIR isn't going to work can anyone recommend on that will? What should I look for?
"The AUX input connector offers digital and analog inputs that can be configured to
set a TTL output upon a single input or a combination of inputs. 3 analog inputs are
offered that have an input range of 0 10Vdc."
WebControl Manuals
http://www.redhillnetworks.com/manuals/webcontrol/WebControlUserGuide2-03-03.pdf
http://www.redhillnetworks.com/products/webcontrol/webcontrol-faq.html
PIR Manual
http://www.optexamerica.com/productpage.aspx?id=34
Thanks again
I've got an interesting problem... monitoring the usage of the restoom at work. We have probably 60-70 employees sharing 2 restrooms (1 mens / 1 womens) as well as many others from other floors (our sales department likes to visit... something about a single stall). Anyways - so as you can imagine its quite common to get up and go over to the restroom (which is down the hall) and find out its occupied. This gets old when it happens 3-4 tmes a day. So - surely this can be automated right?
I did some searching and found a similar project online called the ipotti - http://stuffandymakes.com/2011/03/03/ipotti%E2%84%A2-released/
Basically this guy has a similar issue and solved it by monitoring the status of the lights in the bathroom - to an ethernet controller that his office Mac's check.
This is essentially what I'm trying to accomplish - although we have a lighting system in the building and we cant be turning the lights on and off a hundred times a day so I had to come up with a different option for determining occupancy. I figured the next best thing would be a PIR to monitor occupancy right? I know i could try and monitor the door and what not but i think that might be hard to make accurate - since you might have someone exit and enter at the same time.
I remember reading quite a bit about the WebControl PLC boards on cocoon some time ago and per the documenation below the aux input has analog and digital inputs you can monitor - in addition to temp/humidity sensors. My thought was to connect the PIR alarm contacts to one of these analog inputs. The documentation indicates I should be able to use GET/WGET to read status of input and output. So i went ahead and purchased the WebControl and a fairly cheap PIR - Optex RX-40PI. The end product I'm hoping for will be a Windows 7 Widget that queries the Webcontrol status of the analog input (0 or 1) for occupancy At least that was my thought.
Ultimately where I'm stuck now is i figured I could just attach the alarm contacts of the PIR to the analog input on the WebControl board but now I'm not sure - the PIR says 'N.C. 28V DC 0.2A max.' on the alarm output - which i know is normally closed but I'm stuck on the 28v DC statement.. I had assumed Pin 4 (GND) and Pin 1 (input 1) - can anyone confirm I'm reading that correctly? are the voltage statements cause for concern?
The WebControl says the analog inputs can range between 0-10vdc - so will it not work with this PIR? I'm sure this is a simple question but i'd rather not burn up a $35 WebControl panel by overlooking something this simple. If this PIR isn't going to work can anyone recommend on that will? What should I look for?
"The AUX input connector offers digital and analog inputs that can be configured to
set a TTL output upon a single input or a combination of inputs. 3 analog inputs are
offered that have an input range of 0 10Vdc."
WebControl Manuals
http://www.redhillnetworks.com/manuals/webcontrol/WebControlUserGuide2-03-03.pdf
http://www.redhillnetworks.com/products/webcontrol/webcontrol-faq.html
PIR Manual
http://www.optexamerica.com/productpage.aspx?id=34
Thanks again