Lunaticastronomical

Simple setup to safely close the roof with the CloudWatcher

If you have a simple roof automation, maybe a garage-door system, there is an effective way to close the roof in case of unsafe weather, including sunrise, with no risk of opening it again (unless manually, for the next session).

The risk with this simple systems is inadvertently opening the roof, as a simple pulse will also open it if closed. We’re going to avoid it.

The elements we need:

 

The connections:

    1. Starting from the power supply, the “+” side, goes to one terminal of the limit switch,
    2. From the other terminal of the limit switch to one of the CW relay terminals,
    3. and from the other terminal of the CW relay to the timer relay.
    4. The “-” or ground from the power supply, directly to the timer relay. (at this point we have connected the timer relay to the power supply, via 2 switches)
    5. Last, the “com” and “no” (normally open) connections of the timer relay, go to our garage system push button.

With this setup, if the roof is open, and the CW signals unsafe, then and only then, the timer relay will generate a pulse, that will (hopefully!) close the roof.

As soon as the roof is not open, it does not matter if the CW signals safe or unsafe again, as the circuit will be open.

While this is far from failproof (for example, we’re not warned if the roof fails to close for whatever reason), it is really an improvement to a simple “button pushing” action.

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