[TriEmbed] MOSFETs or Relays

[Grawburg]

To all,

According to "KISS" I should use the relays for my set-up. They work well, are not expensive, and easy to program (although I really dislike the 'Low = On' of this approach).  Were I not using pre-made track turnouts and could then have individual solenoids for each direction I'd probably want to create a MOSFET setup.  One thing I will change in the current relay-based setup is to make sure I have a common ground between the Pi and the other components. It never dawned on me that having a ground for the Pi, a ground for the 5 volts running the relays and the 12 volts switching the track was bad design. I will keep playing with the MOSFET solution just for the fun of it, but discard it for the present time for the Raspberry Pi projects here at the museum.  I also can't afford to make a mistake and burn out a turn-out -- they are a little expensive. (I've already burned out 3!!)


I'm going to look for another project that could utilize a MOSFET or a relay to show how the coding is different (active HIGH versus active LOW) for each and how a solid state device has advantages over a mechanical switching device. 


Rick, Rodney, Glen, Paul . . . thanks for your suggestions and guidance.




Brian



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.triembed.org/pipermail/triembed_triembed.org/attachments/20140627/b27083ea/attachment.htm>