Room setup - Shelf electronics
Room setup - Shelf electronics
Sorry for the delay, since I had promised this post to be released a while ago. I had allot of things going on lately and was also working on other projects. But here it is. The build of my room setup project's shelf electronics.
Overview
In my room setup, I have placed a shelf on the right side at the wall. I mounted multiple cables on it with 3D printed cable mounts which allow for a permanent fixture with zip ties and a temporary fixture with cables, for easy replacement and expansion of for example network cables. Additionally the shelf hosts the major room control components, which is a Raspberry Pi to host the room control server and an Arduino to control some peripherals (router, lighting, shutters, etc.).
Electronics
The electronics in the shelf are separated into two compartments in the shelf. On the left side are the electronics control and on the right side the primary control.
Electronics control
The Left side of the shelf features an Arduino Nano, which connects to a x16 relay. This relay controls power to the shutters, LED, router, ethernet switch and power extender on the shelf. The Arduino Nano is connected to the raspberry Pi on the other side of the shelf.
Power relay
The x16 relay, which primarily controls the power of peripherals. The relay features 16 ports where 6 are for shutter controls (3 shutters for up and down), power to the router, power to the ethernet switch, power to the power extender on the shelf, power to the LED power supply, 4 for power to 4 different LED strips (from the supply), and 2 ports are free, which will possibly be used in future for an air conditioner and small fridge, which I would also like to have hooked up to this.
Primary control
The primary control compartment on the right side contains a USB hub which provides power to all Arduino controllers in the setup. A x4 relay controls the power to these controllers, which allows to turn them on or off. The relay is controlled by a Raspberry Pi, which also hosts the web interface to control the relays (which will be featured in an upcoming post) and also connects to the Arduinos in the system to control them.
Controller relay
The x4 relay connects the 5v wire of my self made USB cable to the controllers. This allows to Switch the Arduinos and related relays on or off. Additionally the power supply of the USB hub powering the Arduinos is also hooked up to this relay, which allows it to switch off all Arduinos in the system. At the time of the images this was not done, since the shipment of the USB connectors had not arrived at that time.
Cabling
I think it is visible, that the cabling is not done by a professional. But I'm pretty okay, with how it turned out. The two shelf compartments will anyway be covered in future, to hide the electronics, since the LEDs on the boards makes it harder for me to sleep at night.
Cable mount
The cable mounts are simple 3D printed mounts which can be screwed on the shelf to mount cables on them with either a zip tie for permanent mount or wire to make modifications easier. Ethernet cables are for example mounted with a cable to make it easier to place a new cable into the system.
Shutters
I just got my shutters installed at the end of last year. But the shutter switches obstructed my original personal desk model, so I already decided then to remove the switches and place the cables onto a relay to automate them. When starting with this project, I decided to place the shelf there, which would anyway not provide enough space for the switches.
The relay connects the two wires of each shutter motor (one for up and one for down) to a default 240V AC Neutral wire, which acts in the same way as a switch, but just controlled with a computer. This was the first time I worked with a relay, but had already seen something like this at work, where we used a similar system to control our office lights and shutters.
Power
Next to the shelf there is a power socket in the wall with three ports. I intend to use them for Primary desk, Computer bench and Shelf. So I only use one plug on the shelf and split the wires to power all devices on the shelf.
The power cable for the shelf is hooked up to two screw terminals, where it is splitted to multiple cables to power the peripherals (router, Raspberry Pi, etc.). All peripherals which are controlled over the relay, have the according 240V Neutral wire connected to the relay, which allows to turn the power to the device on or off.
Some devices (like the router and ethernet switch) are connected differently to the relay, to provide power to them, when the power of the terminal is off. This ensures that in case of a power outage of the arduino board (which happens temporarily on reset), these essential devices are still running.
Additional modifications
Some additional modifications done to the shelf.
Raised
Since the drawers on the shelf will be placed towards the secondary desk, I had to raise the shelf to open them, because the secondary desk surface would obscure one of the drawers. For that I used two boards, which I screwed on the bottom of the shelf. This rises it by 1 cm, which is enough for the drawer to open.
Cover
To cover the electronics I used a cardboard with cutouts for the cables and some 3D printed rails to slide it in front of the two electronics compartments. The cardboard was covered with cloth pieces cutted out from an old black sweatshirt to match the color of the shelf. This hides the LED lights of the electronics which makes it easier for me to sleep at night.
Raspberry Pi cooling
I also just recently ordered some passive coolers for the CPU on the Raspberry Pi. This should also increase the lifespan of the Raspberry, since it will be running 24/7 with the web server.
Images
Images showing the whole shelf.
Front
The image of the whole shelf front. As already mentioned, I covered the electronics later on (so the LEDs are not recognizable at night). Also visible is the power cable, to which all the electronics are hooked up. In the left top of the left electronics compartment is a screw terminal, which will be used to hook up the LED strips (4x ground to relay and 1x 12V ports). Above the primary control compartment is the power extender, which is also controllable over the relay.
Left
The image of the left shelf side. On this side, the router power supply is mounted and it also runs the ethernet cables from the router to the computer bench, switch and switch to Raspberry Pi. Additionally the slightly angled LED strips are visible along the left and upper edge of the shelf.
Back
The back side of the shelf. The wired on the center right side, are mounted to a screw terminal, which hooks up to the shutter control cables.
Right
Right side of the shelf. The router on the top is angled towards the closest LTE antenna, for the best possible signal.
Just some days ago I completed the primary desk electronics as well as a major part of the cable management. I'm currently setting the highest priority on the development of the room control, which consists of a server to host a web interface and communication to the arduinos.
Thank you for visiting my blog and reading this post. If there are any questions or opinions you like to share, feel free to write a comment on this post or over my various social media channels.
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12018-07-16T22:00Z HE - Roger "Equah" Hürzeler
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