Relay board mounting suggestions please

[SethP]

Hi! I just ordered two relay boards for testing, and if all goes well, I'll be getting around 10 more. I'll be using them primarily for controlling shades/drapes where I need two relays per shade/drape, but also for my garage doors and I'm sure I'll come up with some other uses as well.

How have you mounted these? I'm looking at the close-up picture, I'm not sure if there is enough room to drill holes. Does someone make mounting tracks or similar? I'll be putting these in either an alarm or structured wiring enclosure.

Thanks!

Seth

 

[keepersg]

Doesn't look like there's enough of an edge on these to use the Elk circuit board glides. I'd be reluctant to drill holes as well. You could use the double sided foam tape that Elk sells. If you're handy with a table saw, you could take a thick piece of plastic (the kind you use to make wood working jigs) and cut appropriately space slots for the bottom edge of this board. This would let you mount a lot of them in a small space.

 

[sda]

Hi! I just ordered two relay boards for testing, and if all goes well, I'll be getting around 10 more. I'll be using them primarily for controlling shades/drapes where I need two relays per shade/drape, but also for my garage doors and I'm sure I'll come up with some other uses as well.

How have you mounted these? I'm looking at the close-up picture, I'm not sure if there is enough room to drill holes. Does someone make mounting tracks or similar? I'll be putting these in either an alarm or structured wiring enclosure.

Thanks!

Seth

I have a relay board in front of me. The picture at hobby-boards.com is the older v3.0 board. I have a v3.2 board. There are two 1/8" holes in the board, one at the corner of the blue terminal strip next to the heat sink, the other to the left of the rj45 block in the blank spot between the U2 and U5 labels. You might be able to use some motherboard standoffs, but the other end wouldn't be supported. There's about 1/8" of open card at the bottom where it says "4 channel relay". You might be able to drill a hole near Q3. It'd be tight and if the drill slips - there goes the card.

Centrally locating the relay boards in some ways defeats the purpose of 1-wire. You have to run all your control wires back to the central point vs running a cat5 cable out to the remote location and putting the relay board there.

For my "thermostat", I'm just going to nail up a 2-gang junction box in the attic, run the 1-wire cat5 and thermostat cable into it, connect it up, tuck the relay board into the box, and put a blank cover on it. No mounting required.

 

[gatchel]

Depending on the dimensions of the board and the amount of unused PCB that extends past the components, you may be able to use a product that is called Snap-Trac. They make it in different widths and it can be cut to length with a hack saw. I believe that it can be purchased through Newark Electronics.

 

[SethP]

Snap-Track looks perfect; see: http://www.scidyne.com/snaptrck.htm

I've thought about whether I want to home-run my wires or distribute the relay boards, and I'm going for home-run. I think in the long run it will be easier to maintain and better allows for flexibility. I have to run power to each window treatment anyway, and I'm setting up a solar-charged battery system, so everything has to be home run. It's pretty much just as easy to pull 2 or 3 wires as it is to pull one.

One area is a big challenge, and if I can't home-run wires there, then I'll put a few relay boards there, as I have two cat 5s run to there now from before some construction.

Of course, even if you distribute the relay boards, you still have to mount them someone in the electrical boxes.

Seth

 

[ericvic]

As sda said there are a couple of holes in the Relay board for mounting purposes. They are not in any "standard" location but can be used to mount the Relay board. I thought I had updated the pictures on the website to show the latest version of the board but I guess I missed it

I don't think the snaptrack will work because there is not 2 parallel edges that are exposed. The 12 pin screw terminal comes right to the one edge and the 2 port RJ45 jacks hang over one of the other edges.

Eric