Sunday, November 26, 2017

61: Hoop House Rollup Motors

I described this system back in post 56. I meant to get this done early in the summer but things got in the way. I had 4 hoops to do and would have preferred to just install one first to get the wrinkles out but because it was already September I did them all at once. And we got to experience the problems times 4.

Here's what the smartphone web page looks like at the moment:
                                                                                  
Hoop fmX Sidewalls:
9:50PM: Hoop Temp: 40°
Auto Temp: OFF
Motors: Left=DOWN, Right=DOWN
Weather: Temp: 38.8°, Wind: N 1.1 MPH

Change?
Auto Temp Mode: Turn ON

Both Sides: Roll UP

Left Side: Roll UP

Right Side: Roll UP

Stop Motor!

Reload Page
                                                                                  

Here's a pic of a motor and the 196' long rollup pipe:


In the web page: info above the word "Change" shows the current state of the system. If you click any of the next 4 items below that the wording will change accordingly.

Here are some of the problems I have run into:
1. We had to use WIFI extenders because of the distances involved. It took a few tries to get them placed properly.
2. Flakey Internet service caused me to add manual UP/DOWN buttons to the Photon system enclosures.
3. Two of the 4-port relays I use to switch the 24v DC between the wires to the motors have failed.
4. The ACS714 current sensors are a disappointment so far. The analog readings are inconsistent (as they are currently wired). This means that rollup/down operations have to use worst-case wait-times. Very irritating.
5. It turns out that the rotation settings on the motors have to be adjusted after a few up/down cycles. Perhaps because wrinkles in the plastic get smoothed out with the uniform running speed of the motors.
6. Adapting the motor shafts to the hoop rollup pipes was challenging.
7. Getting  "Auto Mode" to work properly was a trial. At first I had the auto UP temperature too close to the auto DOWN temperature. So, the sides roll up, temperature drops immediately and the sides roll back down; over and over. Placement of the temperature sensor is tricky and the UP/DOWN thresholds have to be over 15 degrees apart.
8. Local temperature and wind is boiled-down from wunderground.com for the zip code. It is updated every 15 minutes by a Raspberry Pi.
9. An Rpi running Particle-agent sends and receives messages (via publish/subscribe) from the Photon systems.

More to come.