My swing gate motherboard fried itself, and its crazy expensive to replace. I set about building a setup to make my own 'motherboard'. I've built the prototype and installed it on the gate and it all worked fine for a few cycles, until the cheap Chinese relays started sticking.
I now want to build the long time version of the circuit, and the first thing that needs to go are the cheap relays. I am using 2 MPC Automazioni Titan 500 gate motors (1 for each gate/door), rated at 240v 1.8A (my mains voltage is 240V). The motors work by having a common/ground and then having 1 of their 2 poles energies at a time, 1 pole closes and 1 pole opens. Both poles are connected by a capacitor, for reversing polarity, but this isn't important for the scope of this question.
I've read that solid state relays are more reliable for this application and can better withstand the inductive load exerted when the motors start and stop. I've also seen mentioned voltage snubbers to prevent spikes and kick-backs, that can weld the relay contacts closed.
I know some basic electronics but it's now getting a bit out of my knowledge set. Can you suggest what relays (or equivalent) I need to reliably energize the motors and if I need anything else to protect the relays, such as a snubber.
My setup is currently made of an Arduino UNO R3, a 12V power supply and the cheap 12V 6 relay board (currently using 2 relays per motor, and 1 for the common of both motors (as an additional safety cutoff in-case of relay sticking)).
And if you can suggest some good brand names it would be great, and websites/shops (preferably in or delivering to France).
I understand well, I personally have Esp32 next to my gate control board.
What about the standard features, like current draw sensing for obstacles and other safety features. They add quickly your costs, especially if you want to use "local" sources...
In Italy I can find universal boards at 60-90eur. They usually have plenty of input/output pins to play with...
FOTEK also known as FauxTEC are notorious for poor quality and failures.
They are as bad as the mechanical Chinese relays you had fail.
Good reliable relays are expensive.
Yep, stay away from them. Genuine Fotek might be really good, you just don't find them. The fakes are really dangerous, you can find whatever crap inside SSR "rated" 100A.
@jim-p These are the brand I used. They were no problem. Not sure if these are adequate re voltage and current, but I am sure an amazon search in France will help.
(https://amz.run/9T24)
I have doubts. If you google: "heschen" ssr, you get about nothing... Some chinese export brand.
Be careful, if you don't have to do motor speed control with your relays, better to have reliable traditional relay than some random chinese "SSR".
I assumed safety circuits, I thought you were trying to say there was some sort of requirement for a 'speed controller' like a throttle. Different cultures, different meanings. All good.
I'm not following you. Anybody can choose how to drive his gate. Make it guillotine if you want. My comment about speed control was related to choice between traditional relay and ssr. SSR offers much better speed control than shaking relay control.
