måndag 6 maj 2013

DMX controlled water cooler

I was once presented with the idea to make a water cooler that made bubbles on cue. the idea was that the cooler went empty during a 50 min theater show. It also needed some mystic lights. There was also the idea that the tap on the cooler some times worked and some times not. The solution i found was to make a setup with two dmx controlled valves and and a waterproof rgb led strip with a dmx controller.
Im going to leave the rgb led strip out of this story and concentrate on the dmx bubbles. First i got my hands on a water cooler and luckily i got one of those with a heater to make warm water for tea or instant coffe. When I opend it i found out that there was noway to make a nice cut to the cooled part of the cooler it had plastic pipes for the water molded in to the construction. But the the warm water was in a steel tank with a heater and it had a inlet pipe from the water bottle and a outlet pipe to the tap. I just took a tiger saw with steel cutting blade and cut the heating tank free. When i measured the steel pipe diameter i found out that the pipes outer diameter was a bit bigger than some food grade tubing I had. That men that i could crank the tubing on to the pipes and it fitted perfectly without any water leaking out. Then i got a t-connector for the tubing and two 12v solenoid valves with tube fittings. The first valves I got, I didn't pay attention to the lowest pressure they would open at. When I tried them they didn't open at full. Because the cooler has very low water pressure and most valves needs pressure to open fully. When I found valves that open at a really low pressure it worked fine.

I made the controller to the valves out of two velleman dmx relay kits (k8072) and i putted them in a box together with a power supply.
It worked very good when you wanted the cooler to make bubbles you opend the valve to the waste tank and the bubbles came with a slight delay and the same when you closed it. When the actor took water from the tap you open the tap valve and water is running through. If you want it to look as the water stops you close the valve as the tap is open.





Link to the dmx relay card:

2 kommentarer:

  1. fick du reläkorten att funka på snabb dmx?

    har en velleman dimmer som inte tycker om snabb dmx den feltolkar som en galning när jag kör snabb dmx
    däremor billiga controllers går bra

    SvaraRadera
    Svar
    1. jag vet faktiskt inte vad vi körde för hastighet men vi använde ett Etc congo och det gick bra. jag har använt relä korten i flera projekt utan problem. så jag har tyvärr inget riktigt bra svar ang hastigheten på dmxen. Men jag har aldrig upplevt det som ett problem med dessa kort.

      Radera