August « 2016 « Landis Vinchattle

August 20, 2016

Remote power switches for rebooting cablemodem and router

Filed under: DIY,Electronics,Energy,Links,Monitoring,Networking,Projects,Purchases — Landis V @ 10:41 am

I hate it when I’m away from home and either the ISP or some of my equipment glitches, necessitating a reboot or two. I have enough systems in place that I should be able to automate this process. To do so, I need to get some remotely controllable equipment, create the state diagram (not good if I power cycle one of the network components required to reach the remote switch and it doesn’t come back up!), and write the scripts to run the logic.

I’d also like to have easily accessible power switches in my data closet so I can power cycle the devices without having to pull them down and unplug the power from the back of them.

Hardware components I’ve looked at

SainSmart 16 channel web relay – at Amazon. This could work if installed between the transformer block and the switches.

Ethernet relay on eBay, claims to be AC250V @ 10A, though that would probably be pushing it. Would have to look up the specs on the relays they used. For the watt draw on the AC, depending upon the size, might be able to install it inside a large surge protector housing and wire the outlets through it.

Controllable Four Outlet Power Relay Module – at Adafruit. Not network connected, and would require some other device to control it. But most likely UL listed and designed to handle AC.

Ended up finding a Digital Loggers LPC-3 on eBay for $57 shipped that should do the job nicely. Manual is here.

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More 434MHz stuff to look at later

Filed under: Communications,DIY,Electronics,Hacks,Links,Linux,Monitoring,Projects,Raspberry Pi,Software,To Buy,Wireless — Tags: linux, reference, Technology — Landis V @ 10:09 am

Acurite #0899 self emptying rain gauge – at Amazon

Blog post on reversing the signal from Acurite temperature sensors; may be similar for the rain gauges. Also mentions the RTL SDR. Probably wouldn’t be bad to have.

Another blog post regarding reading the Acurite 5n1 station. Possible that part of this will already cover the rain gauge. Also discusses SDR and mentions the rtl_433 tool.

This blog post looks like rtl_433 supports the Acurite 896 decode natively, so if the protocol is similar or the same it may be simple.

RTL Software Defined Radio – at Amazon – seems like it’s probably a decent model, some good reviews. Looks like there’s a little more to it than just “buy this and set up the software”.

Bought a cheap receiver off of eBay from Hong Kong for $7.31 (original listing).

Also, here was an Instructable about making a cheap combination RF/Bluetooth/433 MHz remote using an Arduino.

Additional Links

http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Frequency-Detection/
- Frequency detection on Arduino
http://www.instructables.com/id/RF-315433-MHz-Transmitter-receiver-Module-and-Ardu/
- 434 MHz transmitter/receiver on Arduino
http://www.princetronics.com/how-to-read-433-mhz-codes-w-raspberry-pi-433-mhz-receiver/
- 433 MHz receiver on Raspberry Pi
- Did this 10-Oct-2018 with an ESP8266-12E, and it worked well in receiving from a Spigen 433MHz doorbell transmitter. Only minor change was configuring “mySwitch.enableReceive(4)” instead of 0 for use with pin marked D2 on the ESP. Range was only a few feet with the receiver I was using, though I wonder a bit if using the “ReceiveDemo_advanced” would improve things at all. Need to play with this more
https://hackaday.io/project/63004-esp433-wifi-to-433mhz-bridge
- 433 MHz with an ESP8266… not complete though.
https://www.instructables.com/id/Using-an-ESP8266-to-Control-Mains-Sockets-Using-43/
- Another partial guide on the ESP, would need to determine how to wire up the receiver for the ReceiveDemo, but otherwise this could be pretty useful for supported protocols.