I have a piece of equipment (pump) with a wired remote controller. The controller has a toggle switch for forward/off/reverse and there is also a potentiometer for speed control. There is a total of 6 wires, three to the toggle switch and three to the pot. My life would be made much easier if I could convert this to wireless. You guys are my 3 to last hope, if I can’t figure it out here I am going to visit my local hobby shop, if all else fails I am going to buy the Charles Platt Make:Electronics book with components and learn electronics in my free time. The way I see it, if we can control a robot on the surface of mars, I can control my pump from 20 feet away. I look forward to making this work.
Your pictures aren’t loading; at least not for me.
Wireless can mean a lot of different things. Do you just want to have button somewhere that allows you to control forward and reverse; something like a garage door opener? Or do you want to control it through your computer, tablet or smartphone? Or do you want something in-between? Do you need to control it from 10 ft, 100 ft, 1,00 ft or from across the country? Do you need feedback that the pump is working, or what its speed and direction are?
Good question. I would prefer to continue using the existing remote housing and just transmit the signal to the pump. I will at most be 30’ away. I have found several generic remote switches but I would rather just use the guts from these transmitter/receivers to function my existing wired remote. What I’m not sure about is how to do that.
The remote at Deal Extreme (http://dx.com/p/4-channel-wireless-remo … 60v-128683) should do what you want. It has 4 relay outputs rated at 7 amps AC each, which should handle a motor up to about 1/2 Horsepower. Just wire the relays in parallel with your switch – that way you can operate the pump from the wired remote or the wireless remote.
It’s a 7.4 amp max draw 220V 3 phase 2hp motor. I want to be able to control the speed from the remote too, would the ucontroll handle that? I don’t mind spending the money to do it right, the pump itself is worth over $6k so a few hundred to get it where I want it wouldn’t make a big difference.
Your pump motor has a complex controller (probably a Variable Frequency Drive, not just the little box that sets the direction and speed) and it is unlikely that you will find an off-the-shelf, remote controlled replacement for the pot that controls the motor speed. You will need to provide more information about the controller, if you want good advice!
AIRICCC:
I want to be able to control the speed from the remote too…
The easiest way to do that would be to replace the pot with a **motorized-potentiometer** - that's simply a pot that has a small DC motor attached to it. You control the position of the pot by applying a voltage to the motor which then turns the pot. You can get them with attached encoders that provide feedback on the position of the pot. If you connect the encoder to a micro-controller you can drive the pot to a specific point (motor speed).
The new pot probably won’t fit in the existing enclosure without modification.