I don’t want to trash the one remote I’ve got, but I’d love to find a way to have my mpcnc controller turn the collector on and off. I’m thinking of trying to leverage the coolant controls. Honestly, i think i can get the controls sorted, but i don’t know where to get a replacement remote to experiment with.
I would guess “channel c” is a manufacturer spec. It might mean that to get an extra remote, you would have to open a few boxes to find another C. I don’t have much rf experience, but unless you find the same chip they use, I doubt you’ll be able to get it hacked.
Does the switch have a physical button? Maybe some of those 2.4GHz chips connected to the switch instead of messing with the remote.
This is a bit Frankenstin-ish, but you could feed your Vac from two sources…your wireless remote and from an IOT Relay. I do this but with a manual switch. This allows the MPCNC to drive the vac, but also allows me to turn it on manually to clean up. The “popular” IOT Relay runs about $25.00 and there are forum entries on how people have used it. It is limited to 12A (without modification).
I’ve already got a relay board in my control box, but the dust collector is on the far side of the shop, and the relays are limited to 10 amps. The remote switch works really well for everything else so i thought I’d look for a way to loop it in for automatic control.
I’ve considered setting up micro switches on the DC blast gates to start the blower whenever a gate is opened. Then i could use a servo to open the blast gate nearest the mpcnc. This is sounding even more frankenstein.
Our you could go more Rube Goldberg and use an Arduino and a servo to press the buttons on a spare remote. A cleaner way is probably to replace this remote switch with a home automation remote that you can access by an Arduino or similar as well as a physical remote. So many “ugly” choices.
I am using a larger solid state relay (20A) in line with the power switch on a cheap power bar, all the nasties (router, shop vac) get plugged in there and turn on and off with m3 / m5. I also have a 8A relay bar with each relay being 10A, that I could use to control each socket in a power bar, but so far I haven’t had a need.
Your dust collection is probably fancy, I am just using an old r2 unit. I don’t care for remotes myself, I would rather a browser or app on a phone, too many batteries to manage.
What I have working is a pi zero with Mqtt service running on it and a python script monitoring it.
Then I have Esp32 monitoring the ac current going to the machines. When a machine turns on, current goes up. That triggers the Esp32 to send the Mqtt command to turn on the relay.
When the machine turns off, it waits 60 seconds before turning off the DC to clean out the lines. It also gives me time to turn on another machine without the dc cycling off/on.
I have the prototypes all working, I just need to make an enclosure for the Esp32 and buy more devices for the rest of the machines.
All my blast gates are right by the machines, so they’re easy to open up manually.
I was designing blast gates to open up with stepper motors and decided that’d be unnecessary.
Thanks for all the input. I’m leaning more toward putting microswitches on the blast gates and using them to trigger a relay to turn the blower on and off. A simple gcode prompt to open the gate shouldn’t be hard to sort out.
I’ll be reworking the blower setup next week to add a second stage thein baffle in a fiber barrel and an upgraded Wynn environmental filter to my harbor freight dc. Maybe I’ll wait until the air handling is all set before I dig into automating the on/off.
