I'm attempting to drive a BTA08-600B thyristor:
with an OPI-110 optoisolator:
But I'm a little confused as to what goes where. Could someone please enlighten me as to which pins I hook up to what?
Thanks!
Firstly that's a triac, not a thyristor, and secondly I'm not sure that opto isolator can sink enough current to reliably trigger the triac - it says 5 to 50mA for the triac and I don't think you can get much more than 5mA.
You'll need a voltage source to drive the gate via the isolator's output transistor, BTW.
I'm wondering why you have a triac and not a thyristor - is this an AC switching circuit?
Hey Mark, don't be scared for me! It is indeed a triac, and yes, this is for an AC switching circuit. It's a 3phase power factor correction system.
Frankly, I'm not worried about triggering the Triacs reliably, they seem to go off with the slightest provocation. I'm more worried about noise setting them off!
I looked up as many schematics as I could stand to look at and just couldn't find one that involved the 4 pin optoisolator. I could only find ones that involved the 6 pin version with the zero detection component, which I don't need since the arduino handles that for me.
I'm worried that non-isolated ground connections will cause a current to flow from the high to the low voltage side and fry my board. Do you think I should rectify & convert the incoming AC wave to power the optoisolator's high volatage switching side?
Firstly that's a triac, not a thyristor,
The term "thyristor" covers a family of four layer semiconductor devices including triacs and SCRs:
Lefty