I want to create a arduino timer to water my plants every single day for 10sec each day.
I know there is alot of arduino code tutorial on timer.
But I know nuts about hardware.
I understand Arduino can take input of 6-20v.
The output is 5v. 1/4watts.
My water pump stated it uses 4watts.
How do I set the arduino to have a output of 4watts. The Water pump did not states it's input amp or volt.
So Watts = volt x amps cannot be done. To find out whats the exact amps and volt I need.
There is a link that show voltage Booster. Arduino Playground - RegulatedPositiveVoltageBooster but I dun know how to use it.
So, my question is =
How to know the volt and amps needed by my water pump. input 4watts.
2.How to make arduino output 4watts to power up my water pump.
3.I understand plugging the arduino to a wall plug would be dangerous. So I be using a 12v 1.2amp lead acid battery
The reason I want to use arduino is because I already have a arduino from my school project and I dun need to buy additional stuff.Arduino can do accuracy till millisecond which is what I need cause most of the electrical and analog timer in the market is 15min interval which is too long.
Ok. I asked some friends with engineering experiences.
Now I know my water pump is about 220v. If I were to step up the power of the Arduino. I will need a super big relay. Which is making things more complicated than easier.
but my water pump is damn small it takes only 4watts. Which means according to Watts = Voltage x Amp. it only need 0.018 amp. I dun really understand the relationship.
Question
Can my water pump run using the 5v pin or I need to step up the arduino. Which is crazy as the relay would take too long.
2.Is this way feasible? I might as well DIY a DC motor that takes 5v to pump the water up.
This should be a simple solution not a complicated one. Can someone tell me what to do?
neondagger:
I want to create a arduino timer to water my plants every single day for 10sec each day.
You could do it with an Arduino, but it's overkill. You achieve it just using a 555 configured to produce a ten second pulse, plus an ordinary domestic timer to turn it on once per day. You also need the driver circuit to run your pump from the 555 output, but you'd need that in any case.
You could do it with an Arduino, but it's overkill. You achieve it just using a 555 configured to produce a ten second pulse, plus an ordinary domestic timer to turn it on once per day. You also need the driver circuit to run your pump from the 555 output, but you'd need that in any case.
555 timer looks good but it look more complicated and technical than arduino. Arduino can use C programming with is so much easier to control.
Ordinary domestic timer is not good enough cause the interval in mins or 15mins. I need seconds cause if I run the water for more than a 1min per day. It will flood.
The pump takes 4watts and 220v. mean the amp is about 0.018. If I dun change the amp but try to use a lower voltage. It might work? Cause the pump is actually a super small pump.
Whats the easiest way to do it. Using a 555 timer?
neondagger:
555 timer looks good but it look more complicated and technical than arduino. Arduino can use C programming with is so much easier to control.
Ordinary domestic timer is not good enough cause the interval in mins or 15mins. I need seconds cause if I run the water for more than a 1min per day. It will flood.
The pump takes 4watts and 220v. mean the amp is about 0.018. If I dun change the amp but try to use a lower voltage. It might work? Cause the pump is actually a super small pump.
Whats the easiest way to do it. Using a 555 timer?
A 555 timer is way simpler to use than an Arduino. You just solder a resister and capacitor to the right pins as specified in the data sheet and it produces a pulse of the right length each time you power it up. The domestic timer doesn't need to control how long the pump runs, it only needs to power your controller up once per day. It might power it up for 15 minutes, if that's the resolution of your timer. But the pump itself would be controlled by the 555.
You need a circuit to connect the output of your 555 timer to the pump motor. I guess you would be using a low voltage DC pump as the simplest solution. Anyway, this part of the solution is the same whether you produce your pulse from an Arduino microcontroller or from a 555 timer chip.
neondagger:
Ok. I asked some friends with engineering experiences.
Now I know my water pump is about 220v. If I were to step up the power of the Arduino. I will need a super big relay. Which is making things more complicated than easier.
but my water pump is damn small it takes only 4watts. Which means according to Watts = Voltage x Amp. it only need 0.018 amp. I dun really understand the relationship.
Question
Can my water pump run using the 5v pin or I need to step up the arduino. Which is crazy as the relay would take too long.
2.Is this way feasible? I might as well DIY a DC motor that takes 5v to pump the water up.
This should be a simple solution not a complicated one. Can someone tell me what to do?
You wouldn't need a super big relay.
In a relay a coil magnetically flips a switch. Important is that the coil won't ask too much of your arduino (or other type of solution) and... that the internal switch is strong enough to handle the power needed by the pump.
Both are electronically seperated circuits, arduino powering the coil on one side and the switch handling the pump on the other side.
Since the pump is only 4 watts, 999 out of 1000 relays will be able to handle that amount of power.
At the arduino side though, pins can't handle more as 40 milliAmperes. It's quite important that the relay-coil doesn't use more as those 40 milliAmperes if you connect it directly to one of the pins + GND.
As a safety margin 20 mA would be best. A relay requiring more may work for a while, but will very likely burn the microcontroller of an Arduino.
A solution to this problem is using a transistor, it works like a switch and... can be controlled by an arduino. The right transistor will be able to handle the relay and asks very little of the arduino.
This way... you don't need to search a specific relay, but can use other relays as well.
An example of how to control a relay Arduino Playground - HomePage
Connecting your pump directly to the arduino won't work. The Pump requires AC-mains to function and even if you would mimic AC (Pins normally output DC) an Arduino will never be able to deliver such high voltages by itself. Even if it could, 4 watt would be too much power to handle for the arduino, it's a controller, not a power driver.
You could use something like a 12 volt car-washer-pump though. Arduino still won't be able to deliver the 12 volts required, 5volt is maximum and you probably never find a pump using less than 40 mA.
A magnetic relay and DC motor both use coils for their actions though and as such differ little.
You'll still need to handle the "large" amount of power, but instead of using the relay of the example in the link you could as well use a DC-motor/pump.
Even if you would find a 5-volt pump... you'll still need to take care of the amounts of mAs flowing.
The diode next to the relay in the example is quite important, once the motor (or relay) is turned off an amount of residual energy will flow back from the coil which could... burn the transistor. The resistor in the example prevents the amount of mAs to be too high for the arduino.
Using an arduino as solution probably is overkill, a 555-timer is much cheaper, but... you'll need to research the working and possibilities of the 555. If you already know something about programming, the arduino might be easier. Besides using it as a timer, you could also expand your project by adding a soil moisture sensor, which is quite easy to build and which you could use to give more water on hot days/less on cold days. You could even add a light sensor + lamp and on cloudy days decide to give the plant more light.
But... as told before, if you're going to use AC mains, be very careful and have your project examined by someone with knowledge before you even test it.
Relationships....
If two motors each use 10 watts, of which one needs 5 volts and the other needs 10, one can simply divide the number of watts by the number of volts to see how much current will flow. A current of 2 amps will flow at the 5 volt one (10/5 = 2) and a current of 1 amp will flow at the 10 volt one (10/10 = 1).
If your pump requires 220 volt and uses 4 watts, the amount of current will indeed be 4/220 or ~0.018 amps/ ~18 milliAmperes.
Should your pump require 5 volts to run and use 4 watts, the amount of amperes will increase a lot, 4 watts/5 volts= 0.8 amperes or 800 milliAmperes. This is part of the so called ohms-laws in which the ease (resistance) of electrons flowing between positive and negative and difference in voltage between both is quite important.
Unfortunately wikipedia doesn't describe it in a simple way, but knowing/googling it will help you lots further and helps you prevent a lot of mistakes when building your own electric/electronic equipment.