8 Channel Network Relay Indigo Plugin HOWTO

[TwitchCaptain]

So you have a network relay board and you want to control it with Indigo. Hopefully this post will give you enough information to get going.

The relay board does not come with DHCP enabled. It has a static IP of 192.168.1.166 in the subnet 192.168.1.0/24 (subnet mask 255.255.255.0). If your network is in this same subnet then you should be able to plug the device in and get going right away. If your network is in a different subnet, then you will need to set a static IP on your computer in the same subnet and connect the device directly without your network. You can access the web interface, configure the device, and set a static IP in your network's subnet. If you need help with this process, please open a forum topic and we'll try to guide you through setting an IP on the relay board.

Once you know your device's IP you can go ahead and add it to Indigo. Select New Device, then 8 Channel Network Relay Board. On the screen that comes up, put in the IP if it's different than the default. Now click the Add Relay button. You can add up to 8 relay or 8 input sensors, or a combination up to 8 total devices. Since the relay board has 16 total devices (8 relays and 8 inputs) you will have to create at least 2 separate 8 Channel Network Relay Board devices to access everything. The plugin is smart enough to recognize a duplicate IP and only poll the device once even if it exists multiple times. It is perfectly fine to add a separate device per relay instead of adding 8 in one device; everything pretty much works the same way in this alternate configuration.

After adding some relays and/or inputs, click Save. If you click Cancel, your changes will be lost. Now edit each device's settings and select a relay channel. The channel corresponds to the relay number on the board. With the ethernet port facing down, channel (relay) 1 is on the left, channel 8 is on the right. That's it. Click Save and try to control your relays. They should click when you turn them on or off.

If things are not working, check the Indigo logs for clues.

[grayner01]

Hello,

I have purchased several of the 8 channel relay cards. I fiddled with one of them about a year ago and got it working. However the computer I was using died and had to be replaced. I remember I had to do something funny with the IP address on the Mac, something with SUDO to perhaps try to fix the Mac IP address as an alias or something.... Maybe ifconfig?

Anyways, I'm trying to address both the old as well as a few virgin units from the factory 8 channel cards with 192.168.1.166. I've tried both of the following with no result:

telnet 192.168.1.166 1234

as well as using to browser to try to reach the HTML server at http://192.168.1.166/state.cgi or http://admin:[email protected]/state.cgi

I don't know what I'm doing wrong but I've poured over the forums and also tried many combinations - 10 hours into it now.

Please help me resurrect connection with my 8 Channel Relay boards.

Any help greatly appreciated!

Gary Rayner.

[agame]

Presumably your LAN is in the correct subnet....

To eliminate network issues try creating a network of just your Mac and the board, with the subnet settings specified above. I find the 'IP Scanner' app very handy in debugging as the boards will quickly appear if they have found the network, even if on an unexpected IP.

If you are using Unifi networking equipment, Unifi causes problems with recent versions of the board owing to issues with the default MAC address. If this is your underlying issue, once you have direct connectivity you should be able to change the MAC address (base it on another device you know to be kosher) and the other network settings, and then bring it back to the main network.


(I received one board that is physically slightly different to the usual boards....additional I/0...haven't succeeded in integrating that one at all and received a refund. But as you have previously been able to connect, this isn't the problem).

[Different Computers]

Anyone know how to totally hard reset this board?

It has gotten into some sort of funky state where it has its original IP address, which is not compatible with my network, but it's not accepting any of the saved authentication I have.

Edit: Found the default user name/pwd: admin/12345678

[Different Computers]

Sensor Wiring documentation needs some translation.

I've got a magnetic sensor for my garage door that is just a dry contact closure. Should I use this wiring:

https://imgur.com/ypocVpv

or this wiring?

https://imgur.com/ypocVpv

I think I've wired it up as per the latter pic, but it doesn't work. Thought I'd ask for some clarification before trying to do the more complicated first version. Also it seems counterintuitive to me that a magnetic contact sensor would need 5v.

[jltnol]

So am thinking one of these cards might come in handy for a few things, but don't fully understand how they operate. I'm assuming some kind of power supply is necessary just to make the card work, but from there, here's where things get a bit confusing for me.

One possibility is that once a rely is operated, the power from the supply that operates the card is tuned on to an individual relay.

And the other is the one I'm pretty sure to be true, is that each relay can have a different power "source", much like in the attached diagram. And while in this setup, all the relays have 110v bridged together, I'm half-way guessing one relay could have 110V as the source, one might have the output of an amp as the source and a speaker as the "destination", and yet another relay might have 25VAC to operate a irrigation system valve.

Not sure what other options there might be but want to make sure I'm thinking of this correctly.

Past that, is there a list of cards that are compatible with this plugin? I'm assuming the list in "compatible devices" is mostly up to date.
And is it somewhat safe to assume that most cards will work with this plugin... assuming one can change the port if necessary?
And lastly, assuming I'm correct in that relays work as my #2 possibility, is there a PoE card that would work with this plugin? Perhaps this one? or is the comm protocol completely different?
https://www.waveshare.com/modbus-poe-eth-relay.htm

As always, thanks for help and input.

8-Channel-Relay-Module-Application-Circuit-1431525131.png (44.05 KiB) Viewed 5661 times

[DaveL17]

I can address a couple of these questions. When a command is sent to an individual relay, the board voltage causes the target relay to open or close. The board voltage is completely separate from the line voltage for each load. Each relay is basically just a switch that completes (or breaks) the circuit attached to it.

I wouldn't recommend mixing things like mains line voltage with audio (or any low voltage). First, it's an invitation to lots of electrical interference. Second, it's not super safe and might be against your local electrical code. Given that these things are so cheap, if it was me I'd do mains voltage on one card, low voltage on a second card, and audio (etc.) on a third.

[jltnol]

Super. Pretty much what I expected. And duly noted about different voltages. My plans are incomplete at the moment, but was just using line voltage and audio for my example.

Thanks!