On February 8, 2012 at 18:51, Mario said...
Client wants to turn on driveway/landscape lights when the gate opens.
Great idea. The gate manufacturer should have thought of it and sold more controllers!
She has a gate opener (Apollo 1650) that uses limit switches to tell the motor when the gate is in open or close position. Tech support tells me there is no current on the sensor, just like there wouldn't be on a standard window/door alarm contact.
Tech could be right, but not understanding that it could be used. An open alarm contact has no current, but one that closes passes some current. This implies that while the sensor has no current, there is voltage across it. If you add a very high impedance voltage sensor (high enough impedance that the gate does not confuse its current draw for the current drawn when the sensor closes), then you could monitor the state of the sensor.
Obviously there has to be some sort of voltage/current to tell the opener when the switch is open/closed.
Again, tech could be, well, technically right. He said there's no current. If the switch is open, there's no current, but one can read voltage across the switch. Of course it's also possible that the tech is a "tech" who doesn't really understand the thing.
There are no other outputs/indicators that I can see to use as triggers.
I didn't see an LED in the box that I could tap off of, and there doesn't appear to be any communication port.
That Siren voltage that was not described in your manual is just the ticket... almost. See below.
This is indeed a solution:
On February 8, 2012 at 19:49, BigPapa said...
Read page 14: try the Siren output, 12VDC when gate is opening. Micro relay between that and HAI, timer on HAI.
The one detail to work out with her is whether you have stated this properly, that she wants lights on when the gate is opening. The manual states that there's a 12 volt siren output when the gate is
moving, meaning opening or closing. If the gate is set to open, then close, you'll have to test to see if the siren voltage stays on from beginning of opening until end of close. It would look pretty silly at night for lights to come on while the gate opens; lights go out because gate stops moving; twenty seconds later gate automatically closes, turning lights on again.
