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Introduction
Id be obliged if anyone taking up this
project sent me a quick email, by doing this you will go on my 'support' list,
which means I will keep you informed with any updates as they happen. Also,
I will use your feedback to improve the software and instructions.
NOTE
8 July 2007
Since last year I’ve continued to work on this
project albeit in a different form, and on a commercial basis.
The new generation of ‘Excel Control’ is now
Exorcist ™ and is available from SkullTroniX and comes complete with its own USB control
Board and IR remote, and has capabilities to control servo animatronics via
VSA, and most importantly has a VERY simple to use GUI interface.
I’ve no further plans to Evolve Excel control
but will continue to make it available on this web site
This project is to build and program a PC driven control that can automate
just about anything from a simple sound and light show, through to quite
complex hydraulic and pneumatic machines. If you can use Excel you can
now write your own control software.
I started developing this system last year (2005) to drive my Halloween
haunt, all together last years Halloween project took me two weeks and it worked as follows
(using just one K8055 board) :-
- Produced
a flickering effect on a pumpkin lantern by means of a traditional
pumpkin fitted with a Low voltage lamp, the flickering effect was
generated by a random function from the Control Interface
- Detecting
my victims walking up my drive by means of a PIR sensor, this started
a background sound track and filled the porch with smoke (actually it
overdid the smoke, cest la vie)
- Victims
entered porch broke a beam sensor which stopped the smoke and
triggered a second pumpkin lantern to talk, this was managed by
means of a synched track, I synched a low voltage light
turning on and off in time to the voice, and produced a great effect,
made more so by the fog and the light beams emanating from the
pumpkin.
- On
pressing the doorbell I let rip with a 1000W sound system playing a
thunder track and triggered a strobe light again with a synched track
to produce a lightening effect, the natural flashing of the strobe
coupled with the synched track produces a very effective lightening
- On
the end of the thunder and lightening track the second pumpkin lantern
let rip with a cackle, again using a synched track
- When
opening the door a simple paperclip switch detected the door opening
and played a creaking door track
This year I’m adding a second K8055 board and a pneumatic air supply
and intend adding the following features to my haunt..
- Automatic
door opening via a pneumatic cylinder.
- Pneumatic
animated skeleton to 'open the door' and welcome the victims in.
- Flying
ghost to fly and scream at victims if they are dumb enough to try
and enter.
- Second
fogger with homemade chiller produce a background fog effect, Ill probably
have to control this with an on off timer control.
- Monster
in a box
Starting Out
Of the many obstacles to the amateur
building a home made control system, probably the most daunting is the
programming issue, however, in saying this you must be aware that this
project involves electricity, and unless you are comfortable with working
with AC and DC wiring this should really be left for another year
NOTE every year 3 British citizens are killed by a 9V battery
(testing it with their tongue!!!!)
BTW if you have to ask what AC and DC mean,
then please, read no further.
Besides endangering life and limb, there is also the danger of 'blowing
something up', the worst case (and unlikely) scenario is your PC, but more
likely you can blow the control boards, and anything you connect to
them.... if you are not sure don’t connect it, if you break it, its not my
fault I warned you (this is what’s known as a disclaimer).
The problems for a newbie programmer, writing or even adapting control
software are many, normally, before you can even start writing any code you
need programming software which can be expensive, and then there is a lot
of know how behind interfacing your hardware, drivers etc.
What I’ve tried to do with this guide is remove all these obstacles and put
together a how-to and software for building a complete PC Base control
system. Provided you have access to Excel, and know at least the basics on
how a spreadsheet works, then you can easily write a quite complicated
control system that interfaces your PC with the real world. It really is
that easy, if you can write a spreadsheet to automatically put a 1 or 0 in
a cell then you already know everything there is to know.
Don’t make the mistake if thinking this is a simplified or even limited
system, far from it, here are some of the features already available
Features
- Up
to 20 Inputs
- Up
to 32 Outputs
- Up
to 8 sound files played simultaneously
- Sound/output
synching
- Only
Excel 2000 or later required
- Absolutely
no programming experience necessary
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Hardware
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IO Boards
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This is a picture of my own control board,
and an example of what a completed board looks like. It uses two K8055
boards giving me 10 inputs and 16 outputs, via this board I control
240VAC devices, 24VDC, 12VDC a Low voltage lighting system and a pneumatic
manifold, also there is sound output, but that’s controlled by the PC sound
card and fed into a 1000 Watt 5.1 amplifier
The three RF remote adaptors are cool, they allow me to remotely turn
on/off any of the power circuits, sometimes this is quite handy when you
have a problem and need to disable the system.
You can start by playing with the software side of this project but before
you can do anything other than play, you need to put together the
interfacing hardware.
The control board supported by this system, are the Velleman
K8055 these boards are available as kit form, or for the less
adventurous they can be bought pre-assembled.
The K8055 is a cheap (about £22) self contained board that provides you
with 5 digital (on/off) inputs, 8 digital outputs, and some analogue IO
which is of no interest to this project. Also its possible to connect 4
boards to a single PC giving you a total of 20 inputs and 32 outputs.
Other Hardware
Besides the IO boards your going to need a
bank of relays and some transformers.
Relays
Relays are important, it is possible to control your devices straight off
the board, but not recommendable (I’ve blown a couple of Boards this way),
so Ill say this once DONT CONNECT ANYTHING BUT A RELAY TO THE BOARDS
OUTPUTS .
When selecting relays there are three important factors, the coil voltage,
the rating of the relay and the number of poles.
Coil Voltage
For coil voltage I recommend 12v or 24v DC, 24v is my preference because
there is a lot of good commercial hardware rated at 24v
Rating
The relays rating is the maximum power supply you can control, here in the
UK I use 240V DC relays capable of handling 8 Amps, which means I can
control anything up to about 1.8KW as well as the 24V DC for my Pneumatic
manifold and the simple open/close contact that operated my smoke machine.
Poles
I think dual pole relays are the best here this means they have two sets of
contacts so you can connect both the live and neutral wires (common neutral
circuits often worry me), you can wire a dual pole relay up to provide
simple contact or a reverse function.
For more information on wiring relays see
the appropriate pages on this web site.
Transformers
Next you are going to need a transformer or two, myself I use a multi
voltage laptop power supply, which gives me 22V (near enough to 24V so as I
don’t care), but any power supply will do, you just have to watch the Amp
rating (the more the better). I’ve also got as 12V DC transformer and a 9.5
VAC low voltage lighting system.
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Connecting
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Connection of
your IO board to relays is covered in the instructions for building the IO
board follow this guide carefully, once you have everything connected test
the system using the Velleman test software, when you turn on an output you
should hear the relay click.
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A quick word on inputs
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Inputs are normally a much simpler affair,
provided you use simple open/close contact inputs, be very wary of input devices
that require an external voltage, some of these can pass a current through
the input terminals.
Note Input devices that require an external voltage are
not bad, a classic examples are through beam sensors (light switches) or
PIR sensors, these require a power source to operate, but the important
difference is they don’t pass a voltage through to the contacts, only to
the circuitry that controls the input device.... these devices can normally
be identified because they have three or more wires, one being the common,
one the +nnn Volts and the other the contact.
Stay Clear of two wire devices that need connection to a power source to
work try these without a power source, they may work, the power source
may only be required to light an LED
Programming
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