Hello,
I’ve have the Electric imp with April board, I would like to run the following from the board, but before purchasing the rest I’d like to make sure the Electric imp and April will suit my needs.
Parts
2x Solenoids on Pin 1
1x Adafruit Ultimate GPS Breakout - Pin 1 or 2
1x Spark Fun Serial Enabled 16x2 LCD - Pin 5 or 7
I’ve found instructables for wiring the LCD and I am sure I can find the rest. But what I am not sure of is the following, my project I want to wire the solenoids in series. as I want them to trigger at the same time. Additionally I assume all of this will not work on just 5 to 3.3 volts and extra power source will be needed.
Need more info about solenoids.
What they control. Size and amount of force.
What voltage the solenoids are.
Hundreds of different solenoids, so we need more info.
The imp will control voltage (DC) with transistor, AC using SCR, ??
GPS … keep in mind that your imp is WIFI. Your location is pretty much where your WIFI is.
More Info
I’ve decided to go with these sparkfun 5v Small Solenoids, that are DC
The GPS will be used to trigger an event based on a predetermined location / data. I’ve built a custom portable wifi solution, so the imp will always be connected (unless batteries die.)
You can power the April board with a 5VDC supply. Since you are battery powered, it would be OK to use 6VDC. The supply will need to be big enough (wattage) to power all of your solenoids. Below is the basic transistor driver to power the solenoid coil.
@chakahamilton - the comment was moved to a new post to try and keep forum posts concise (this post seems to be about solenoids - which isn’t a great place for people to find info about LCDs).
Sorry you didn’t get notified - I assumed you would get a message (we’re trying to cleanup / be a bit more strict about where and how things are posted to make forums as usable as possible for people searching for things).
