Relay board for Raspberry Pi?

Hi,

I need to move about 10 relays off a Raspberry Pi for my home automation project. I can find easily ready made, inexpensive boards that will connect to anything at 5V, like an Arduino. But there doesn't seem to be much on offer for the Pi's 3V3 GPIO. My current best find is Adafruit's 3-to-5 and any 5V relay board off DX or so.

I am looking for a ready made board or ready to build kit, as compact as possible. Ideally powered off the 5V pin available on the Pi, but I can live with another P/S.

Any recommendations?

mconners over 12 years ago

I had gotten some sain smart relay boards from amazon pretty inexpensively. They seem to work well. The relay fires on a low signal, and I read in the comments that it works fine with 3V, but I haven't tried it. The have them in several configurations, 2, 4, 8, 16, they may have a 10. Just go to Amazon and search for Sain Smart Relay and you should get a bunch of results.

This is the one I have :

http://www.amazon.com/SainSmart-2-Channel-Relay-Module-Arduino/dp/B0057OC6D8/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=M760SG5PMAT8&coliid=I2GQZEOG05XYU1

Hope this helps,

Mike
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mconners over 12 years ago in reply to mconners

BTW, I would still get some sort of buffer/driver to put in between it and the Pi.
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alfredos over 12 years ago

Hi, that board looks nice and has a fair price.

Thinking about other options, how about SPI or I2C? Or even USB?
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mconners over 12 years ago in reply to alfredos

I don't know of any relay modules that run off of USB or the others, but if you were going to go that route, get a cheap arduino that you configure to control the relays and control the arduino through the pi. You can get a leonardo or Uno from amazon for ~$20, or I have seen Arduino pro mini's for ~$15, simple solution, isolates the pi.

Good luck,

Mike
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Former Member over 12 years ago

I know of a pretty nifty board. It comes from China. Its cheap, easy to use, and comes with a disk containing a PDF file on how it operates. I have used them the past 4 years for a haunted attraction and have only had to replace 2. Heres a link: http://www.futurlec.com/AC_Opto_Output_4.shtml

Shipping is the only down side, 2 weeks standard shipping...
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Former Member over 12 years ago in reply to mconners

Hi couple questions...
@Michael Conners: why is a driver/buffer needed? Are there dangers with relay boards?
@Christopher Miller: Are those boards you gave the link to (AC Opto Output 4) better than using relays? If so why?

Thanks and sorry for n00b question

Cheers!
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mconners over 12 years ago in reply to Former Member

Not really dangers, but the relay boards are designed to run at 5 volts, it would be good practice to try and isolate the pi. I have heard they are not very forgiving of overvoltage and you don't want to blow up one of the gpio lines when you could stick a cheap buffer in the circuit.

Mike
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Former Member over 12 years ago in reply to mconners

A buffer would work well indeed! Thanks for the feed back
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Former Member over 12 years ago in reply to mconners

Thanks Michael and Christopher. Any pointer where I could find some schematics and info about such type of buffer? Thanks again for the tips and clarifications
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Former Member over 11 years ago

Here's what you need. A special Relay board shield for the PI that is just plug and play.

http://www.robogaia.com/4-relays-raspberry-pi-plateshield.html
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