Arduino Uno Wifi for Relay Switching

Projects General Guidance
1

Hey all, trying to get my head around the Arduino Uni Wifi to build a on off switch for a remote electrical pump. Component wise I am set, i have the board and the relay switch. but just trying to get my head around the differences between MCU and ESP.

Essentially i am looking to connect Blynk to trigger the on off on the board. I have a USB dongle that will provide the wifi AP. Any tips or suggestions would be appreciated?

2

what Arduino and WiFi module do you have if any?
have a look at ESP0101S-RELAY-MODULE-TUTORIAL which describes remote control of a relay from a web page
you mention a remote electrical pump - how remote? is it in a WiFi reception area?
if you don't have WiFi coverage you probably need another wireless technology such as LoRa
how large is the pump? the typical Arduino relays should not be used for more than 2 or 3 amps of inductive load

3

So i have the arduino uno wifi with the ESP8266. My connection to the internet is a 4g usb dongle.

My power is not grid connected. I have a 3000w pure sine inverter that has a RJ45 remote switch button that plugs into it to start up and shut down the inverter. I am going to cut the wires on the inverter remote switch and use the cable and wires to connect the relay. My relay is a 5VDC 10a.

When the switch turns on the inverter the pump will then operate automatically from the inverter power.

4

just to clarify

  1. the Arduino with WiFi will have a relay to control the inverter
  2. the WiFi will connect via the 4g USB dongle to Blynk

Blynk will send a command to switch the inverter on/off

what is your problem?

5

the arduino instructions for the board are a bit confusing. It has MCU and ESP coding. I saw a sample that makes the led turn on and off but it loaded code to both MCU and ESP. Do you need to load code to both all the time or just one? If its only one, which is better MCU or ESP?

6

you have two seperate microcontrollers on the board - in effect a UNO and an ES8266 linked by serial communications
you have to program both using the DIL switchs to select the target

  1. you program the ESP8266 to communicate with Blynk to receive the ON/OFF commands which you transmit over the serial link to the UNO
  2. the UNO receives the commands from the ESP8266 and operates the relay on/off

these boards with two processors selecting the operations using DIL switches are not easy to use

7

so we need to know which Uno WiFi exactly, because there are a few very different Uno WiFis

8

This is the exact board

So for example, the wifi settings to connect to the wireless network only need to go in the ESP8266 not both?

9

yes

  1. the ESP8266 handles the WiFi communication with Blynk
  2. the UNO controls the relay is response to commands passed from the ESP8266

send commands over serial between the devices

10

still think the ESP-01s relay module would do what you require without the overhead and complication of programming two different processors and UNO<>ESP8266 communications

11

How does the ESP-01s work with remote connections such as blynk?

12

like any other ESP8266 module
have a look at Arduino-Tutorial-BLYNK-Style-Button-and-ESP-01-Relay which may give you some ideas

13

so i have got the alternate board and usb setup you mentioned. When i try to upload the code to the ESP i keep getting this error:

A fatal esptool.py error occurred: Failed to connect to ESP8266: Timed out waiting for packet header.

All the help topics i can find on this are not assisting. Any suggestions?

14

I assume you are talking abut the ESP-01S relay module
how are you programming it?
the simplest thing is

  1. to remove the ESP-01 from the relay
  2. program it using a ESP-01 programmer and do basic tests
  3. replace it in the relay module

try a weeb search on esp-01 relay module

15

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