Could be an extra space or something… its easy to do.
I think that the Common pin is on the upper right corner of your relay, and the NO pin is the pin on the right of the bottom left pair. If you still have the packaging, it will have a schematic. Those are the two that you want to connect to your opener.
Make sure you solder down that header too.
I have tried every variation of pins and can’t seem to trip the device.
On the opener device, if you take a wire and short NO and Common for a second, does it trigger the device? If it doesn’t something else isn’t set up. If it does, your relay should be able to trigger it.
Also, do you have 12V connected?
when i connect the two it does not trip the actuator. I do not have 12 volts connected to the imp, but i do on the device
Yes, 12V to the actuator, not the Imp. You’ll need to sort out why the actuator doesn’t trip, or the Imp can’t do anything. I’m not at all familiar with the actuator so I can’t help you much there.
I GOT IT TO WORK!!! First off thank you for all of your help! Second off i am an idiot…i was forgetting that the picture on the package is reverse of what it is plugged in…
Nice! No worries… I’ve done that lots of times.
So I got brave and transferred everything from a breadboard to a perf board. After getting everything soldered in, I am running into a problem. The relay is not tripping… I have taken a multimeter and tested everything… I have 3.3 voltage going to the relay as I did before. I can even trip my actuator when I touch it to the normally closed portion on the relay. Can you think of any reason why the relay wouldn’t trip?
Here is the board
Test the voltage on Pin 9 while activating it. Does it go from 0 to 3.3V and back? Then test the voltage at the collector of the transistor while activating. What do you get when Pin 9 goes high and when it is low?
Pin 9 goes from 0 to 3.3 when activated. The collector goes from 3.3 down to 2.5 when activated.
The pickup/dropout voltage for that relay is 3.5/0.25V, so somewhere between the breadboard and your perfboard, you lost a little something. I would probably try the following:
Check for bad/cold solder joints on the board. Use flux to help flow the solder nicely, as my guess is that you have lots of bridges.
Tie VIN to DC+ side of the coil, and not 3.3V, that should give you a larger drop.
You can also try dropping the resistor value, but I wouldn’t go below 680 Ohm, as I think that is where you will start drawing too much current from the Imp pin.
Maybe post a pic of the bottom of the board as well… I’ll take a look at that too.
Here is the bottom view
Maybe resolder that joint where your resistor connects to the line going to the base of the transistor. I can’t see anything wrong so far, but you aren’t getting enough drop across your coil for some reason.
I like using the perfboards that already have busses, like your breadboard, then you don’t have to rely so much on solder bridges… its pretty easy to get a cold joint.
Thanks for the extra set of eyes! I will take a look at that solder joint when I get home.
I’d also use VIN(5V) at the DC+ side of the coil. Per the datasheet, 3.3V technically shouldn’t work, but it is probably close enough to just flip it if everything is perfect. Just move the white wire over to VIN.
Will this work even if I am powering via USB? I was under the impression that VIN was where I would connect a battery to power everything.
Yes, and yes. Notice the jumper on the April board. There are 3 pins. The pin on the left goes to the P+ pad, the middle pin is VIN, and the pin on the right goes to the DC+ pin on the USB port. When you put a jumper on a set of those pins, you are tying either the P+ pad to VIN, or the USB DC+ pin to VIN. You should use the P+,P- pads to connect a battery, because that puts a FET between your battery and VIN, so that if you accidentally reverse the lead, you won’t hurt the board or the Imp. However, you can attach a battery or power supply to VIN, and then you don’t even need to use a jumper.
In this case, leave the jumper covering VIN and USB. That allows your power supply to not only power the Imp, but also provide 5V to the DC+ side of the coil.
That makes a lot more sense!! Thanks for the great explanation!!