Node-Red controlling 8 outlets for AC Power

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1

I'm having too much fun with Node-Red!

I had an old rack mounted power strip and I got to thinking that Node-Red and a Pi Zero W would be the perfect solution to giving myself an inexpensive IP controlled Power Strip.

I got a 5V power supply and an 8 relay strip and while I was at it I cut a connector into the side that I can tap for up to 4 more 5V devices, such as other Pi's.

I wrote this flow and now I can browse to the UI on my phone and control 8 AC powered devices individually.

PowerPiBasic
PowerPiBasic.png934Ă—635 97.6 KB

PowerStripsmall
PowerStripsmall.jpg1440Ă—1920 1.24 MB

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2

Your project reminds me of some Superhouse builds which you may be interested in to give you ideas.. He uses Arduino MQTT for end clients but Node-Red as the main brains...

1 Like
3

Hey Robbo,

I finally had the chance to sit down and watch this video through. Neat stuff!

I am curious though what the benefits of the Arduino are though, vs the Pi. I can pick up a Pi Zero W at MicroCenter for $5 and I can't come up with any reason to go with an Arduino instead considering they seem to cost more for less functionality. I even grabbed a 4 pack of MCP3008s on Amazon and I started playing around with them so I can work with analog inputs too, which seemed like the one gaping hole in the Pi's capabilities. That's 4 Pi's with 8 ADC channels plus all the Pi GPIOs for under $35. Clearly the Arduinos are very popular though. What am I missing?

Thanks again for sharing! I have a list a mile long of things around my house I want to control. My next project is a scale with a load cell for my gravity fed water filter so I know when to add water without having to shake it, and I'm thinking about running a 1/4" water line and an electric ball valve so it will add the water on it's own too!

4

The Arduino is a micro controller so just runs the one program of your choosing and has better control of the hardware, where the Pi is a fully blown OS and does other things making it less reliable and not as fine control.

The Arduino Mega has 50+ GPIO pins and hardware PWM as well. A ESP board like the ESP8266 or it’s successor is also a micro controller with built in WiFi and Bluetooth and seems to be the go to controller these days. (It’s what the sonoffs use, so these devices can be re-flashed using Tasmota for local MQTT control). ESPhome is another easy way to flash these devices.