RLY8-XA as a speaker selector?

And theoretically, I could just add this to the other side of the speakers that I would be turning off, i.e. my kitchen and living room will always be on, but I may want to turn off the bedrooms. Therefore, on the other side of the internal relay for those particular speakers, I would simply connect one side of the resistor listed above, which gets to my next question: Do I simply connect one side of the resistor and leave the other side "hangin'"?

Thanks for all the insight,
Jim
 
Nope, you cannot leave it hanging, for the resistor OR the speakers. You must complete the circuit. Looking at BSR's artwork, you will notice a number of downward pointing arrows. That is the symbol for "ground". So, all those arrows need to get connected someplace/somehow, BSR left them out to make the drawing neater. Don't forget the ground connection on the amp itself, that it the critical return point to complete the circuit. In essence, the resistors are just wired like the speakers would be, one side to the relay, one side back to the amp. You can think of the relay as a logical "or" circuit, the sound can to to the speaker OR the resistor, then it goes back to the amp.
 
Yes, Wayne is correct (thanks for the explanation). If you look at the RLY8-XA manual you will see that for each "Relay" it has "NO", "C", and "NC" inputs. This nomenclature is also referenced on the schematic itself.

I would just not use the resistor coming out of the amp itself (the one with "??" on the schematic) as long as you are not going over five speakers.
 
GadgetBoy:

See if this drawing helps any better. I redrew it to show how one speaker would be wired up.

I would use a terminal strip that you could get at Home Depot or Radio Shack to help with the interconnects.

I also wouldn't mind if a fellow member here can make sure I did everything correctly before you wired it. I have been known to a ... ahem, make mistakes every now and then! :)

Regards,

BSR
 

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I don't see anything wrong with the wiring in that drawing. But I will complain a little bit about the labeling of the relay. You show the NO (normally open) contact as being closed. This goes against standard drawing practice. :)

Jim, it might not matter, but you need to determine if you want the speaker "on" by default (i.e. the relay is OFF/idle) or if you only want the speaker to come on when the relay is on. It just depends upon your normal usage pattern and you could do some speakers one way and some another way, but that does make your HomeSeer logic a bit confusing.

The most logical way of doing things would be to have the NC (normally closed/on) contact go to the resistor and the NO (normally open/off) connector going to the speaker. That way the logic is simple, you turn ON the relay to turn ON the speaker. The drawback is that if there are speakers that you essentially want on most of the time, then the relay will be constantly engaged, but this doesn't hurt anything, just wastes a tiny bit of electricity.
 
WayneW said:
I don't see anything wrong with the wiring in that drawing. But I will complain a little bit about the labeling of the relay. You show the NO (normally open) contact as being closed.
Click to expand...
It was drawn with the relay in the ON position :)

Also be aware that the ON/OFF positions are not polled via Homeseer (mine always show "unknown").
 
The 3 watt in series with the remaining eight speakers in parallel would drop the output power power available for the speakers which would reduce the 'volume level' available for them. Also the 8 ohms is a 'nominal' rating for speakers. The true impediance will change with the frequencies of the sound being played. Its one reason most amps have a lower rating than most speakers so they can handle this impediance swing. Most speaker switches have some circuitry built in to handle the impediance leveling to keep control the load on the amplifier.

I would suspect that you are trying to use this setup for 'anouncemets' and not for music.

John
 
jwilson56 said:
I would suspect that you are trying to use this setup for 'anouncemets' and not for music.
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Yes, this is strictly for announcements. I will use much better equipment when it comes to running my hifi throughout the house.

Thanks everyone for the help. Gonna try this out over the weekend (after I install my brand new hottub that is being delivered on friday morning... ahhhhhhh)

Jim
 
I will be hooking this up over the weekend, so wish me luck!

Unfortunately, I don't have a TW-523 laying around, so I will be wiring it all as normally open, so that all speakers will be on all the time and when the relay is engaged, it mutes the sound for that particular speaker. (or something like that, I'm sure you guys understand what I mean! lol)

Now I just hope that this relay box is working. I have never used it and purchased it used. I am sure there shouldn't be any problems.

I do have a Leopard in the house. Maybe I will just run some wiring from the Leopard to the RLY8-XA (that WOULD be a pain in the a**) and use the COM port to control the relay.

Decisions, decisions...

Jim
 
Well, I got the RLY8-XA setup yesterday and setup the speakers. I am not pleased with the sound quality, so I will be giving Martin a call to purchase another Elk amp and 3 more speakers. This will put 4 speakers on each amp and should work fine. I set it up to work via x10, but I am also wondering if it would be better to run 2 wires from my Leopard to it and have the Leopard control it. I would think I would be able to monitor the status better that way, correct? Because I can't monitor the status now, I connected everything the Normally closed ("NC") instead. This way everything is on unless I sent it an O1 ON, which would then "mute" the room. Now if I experience a power outage I will still hear sound - instead of having to go back and turn each room on after an outage.

Thanks for everyone's help on this - it was greatly appreciated!

Have a great day!

Jim
 
EDIT: LOL, the Elk spec sheet/instructions (page 2 of the pdf) says it has a 2 ohm MAXIMUM load. so you could play dumb and get it replaced under warranty? BTW, that should be a 2 ohm MINIMUM load on their spec sheet.
Click to expand...

I read that!!!


It is somewhat volumn dependent also. If you crank the volumn up all the way and have a two ohm load, you could be drawing too much current and the amp could current limit or the PTC overcurrent protector could activate.
 
BraveSirRobbin said:
Hey, I forgot, but that RLY8-XA unit has "double throw" relays (instead of single throw). So couldn't you do something like the schematic below to avoid volume differences when switching various speaker on/off combinations??

As for the resistor coming out of the amp, could you place a small value there to avoid seeing below the two ohm limit that the amplifier wants to see?

Comments?
Click to expand...
BSR,

Make sure the amp you are referencing is a single ended amplifier, with one lead referenced to negative.

On the M1 the output amplifier has a push pull output and neither speaker lead connects to negative.
 
If The relay8 you are using is from WGL. It does not support X10 group commands. So if you wanted to turn on 3 or 4 zones with the relay, there could be anywhere from 4 to 8 secondes before all zopnes are activated. (relay8 automatically sends a status reponse, adding to the X10 traffice time delay.) I have already tried this, the results were disapointing.
 
Spanky said:
BraveSirRobbin said:
Hey, I forgot, but that RLY8-XA unit has "double throw" relays (instead of single throw).  So couldn't you do something like the schematic below to avoid volume differences when switching various speaker on/off combinations??

As for the resistor coming out of the amp, could you place a small value there to avoid seeing below the two ohm limit that the amplifier wants to see?

Comments?
Click to expand...
BSR,

Make sure the amp you are referencing is a single ended amplifier, with one lead referenced to negative.

On the M1 the output amplifier has a push pull output and neither speaker lead connects to negative.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the reply Spanky. The amp that was suggested earlier was THIS one. That should work with this scenario correct?

As far as the "Relay 8" model being used, the OP will be using the RLY8-XA which is an eight channel double throw relay expansion module from Applied Digital and is used with an Ocelot.

I guess you could also use the Relay 8 unit from WGL Designs as long as you send any commands to it "one at a time" as TCassio mentioned above.
 
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