SSR4 Help

[mizelly41]

First off let me say I am very new to all of this.

I bought and assembled an SSR4 with no DMX.  I will be using an Arduino to send the signals to SSR4.  I have tested just about every connection I know how to and everything checks out, but it isn't working.  When the signal from the Arduino is sent to the board, I assume that pins 4 and 6 on the optoisolator should then close.  When I test the resistance across these two pins with a signal sent to 1 and 2, it shows no flow.  One thing I have found by accident is that if I short pins 4 and 5 or pins 5 and 6, the lights turn on.  Any ideas?

[mizelly41]

After a little more testing, I got the lights to turn on, but not from the signal from the Arduino.  I used an AC-DC regulator and hooked that to the input and the lights turned on.  I am guessing the Arduino is not sending enough current.

[RJ]

The SSR4 like other DIY ssrs turns on by grouding the channel feed. You feed it 5v in the pin 1 of the cat5 input you need the "S" jumper near the middle of the pcb jumper for "(S)sr" mode and the C/S jumper jumpered to the "S" side.

Then when you ground pin 2,4,6,8 it turns on channel 1,2,3,4

Hope this helps as far as current you need little so that is not the issue.

RJ

[mizelly41]

Thanks for the help, but I am still a little confused.

I hooked up pin 1 of the cat 5 cable to the 5V and then pin 8 into ground.  After looking at the PCB without DMX, it looks like pin 8 acts as the ground for all channels.  So 2, 4, and 6 are not needed right?

[mizelly41]

Ok, I got it working.  I had the signal wires switched.

I still have a problem but I may just be overlooking something simple.

On the optocoupler, it shows that Pin 1 is the Anode and Pin 2 is Cathode.  That tells me that I need to send the 5V signal to Pin 1 and the ground to Pin 2.  But from analyzing the PCB, it looks like Pin 1 is common on all four channels and Pin 2 is separate on all 4 channels.   That just seems backwards to me.  It looks like Pin 2 should be common on all four channels.

[RJ]

What you not getting is we do not control the +5v to control SSR's in DIY, We control the ground.

Think of it this way, if you have a basic light on a switch with battery circuit, it does not matter if the switch is on the + or the - side of the circuit it still functions the same.

On SSR's in our world we apply +5v all the time what we connect and disconnect is the - ground side of it. So since pin 1 is the anode then it would be connected to all of them and power applied all the time. Then when you ground the cathode it turns on the light (led in this case).

hope this helps.

RJ

[mizelly41]

Everything is making sense now, and everything is working now.  I have learned a whole lot over the last couple of days while working on this.

A big thank you to everyone that has offered help on this.

[RJ]

Everything is making sense now, and everything is working now.  I have learned a whole lot over the last couple of days while working on this.

A big thank you to everyone that has offered help on this.

Then I am a happy man. If you learned and I helped I could ask for no more!

Btw it is common in electronics to sink for on (Connect to ground) so you will see this often in other things.

RJ

[Freebird]

Great to know.