Barry Gershenfeld wrote:
Nice quote, you replied to the off this topic post from Joe
Putegnat... :)
It was off topic? I thought he had a design for a sprinkler system.
I was trying to get some information.
what's the difference between a relay and a mechanical actuator?
A mechanical actuator has something like a clock motor with cams that
push electrical contacts together--you can't do much with that except
maybe make the motor run faster or stop it. Remember Armitron? A
robot arm toy. That turned out to be cams and levers inside. Or
consider animating a manual typewriter (not that any of us ever did
*that*).
A relay can be controlled by switching a current on and off. So, you
just rip out the factory brains, and drop in your own. Because the
factory designed the right electronics to drive the valves for
you--and they give you a proper power supply along with it. (Assuming
you trust the factory design...from people who name their stuff
"Ecxtra"...) What I call the "brains" just decides *when* to open
the valves.
As nobody was willing to touch "sun synchronous" :-) What happened
here was that I am aware that micros don't keep very good time, unless
you add some more hardware. So I thought, with a light sensor, you
could watch the sun rise and set, and that would be close enough.
I think you're the ONLY one who thought Joe's project was related to the
subject.... :)
got the difference re: actuator and relay now. It's electronic with
relays (I'm assuming relays).
as for naming, I suspect the engineer that gets to name the final
product is VERY rare... or we'd have cats named gizmo, or websites
named google. Oops, that is a website... :)
Again, I did miss your meaning of "sun synchronous". I suppose I could
hook a sun dial to it... :) I've no idea what cpu it runs inside, but
there's a reminder setting you can vary to check your own settings
(software utilizes internet for weather averages, temp, humidity and
wind), I suspect it'd get re-sync'd any time you re-connected the
updated interface.
and, of course, my crippled (no idea what's wrong at this point) Windows
XP won't recognize the USB part of this thing, so now I'll have to fixt
THAT before I can program it... :)
Rich
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