On 04/06/12 23:18, James Harper wrote:
I need a 240V switch that can be controlled via USB, also being able to measure the current flowing (or at least the presence/lack of some current) via USB. Linux compatible of course :)
Ideally this switch would have a dead mans reset too - my linux controller would need to send an 'on' signal every (say) 30 seconds or it would turn off automatically.
Any suggestions? I could probably build the 240V logic myself but aren't qualified and it would suck if something caught fire etc because I did something stupid :)
I bought a reasonably-priced ($10-15 I think?) serial-controlled bank of relays last year, which then works with a USB-to-serial cable fine. I have a Perl library that talks the right serial protocol on Github if you're interested. It doesn't have the deads-man-switch feature though.. That'll be harder to find. You might be able to rig something up via a Leostick ($30) or Arduino or Beaglebone though -- but they might be overkill (and then you'd be worried that your code *doing* the deads-man-switch logic might be buggy..)