200 I/O Project

[gadget-evilusions]

I am not sure what EFX-TEK products this project may contain yet, so I placed the discussion here.

I have a project in mind, that may or may not be possible for next season. I will have approximately 50 rooms in our haunted attraction. I want to put 2 buttons in each room, a red one for extreme emergencies, and a blue one, for not so emergency issues. This purpose of this would be to allow our actors to get immediate help if someone is injured, or their is a weapon spotted, or if they just need to use the restroom. I would need to run the input back to a panel in our control room and be have it display, either thru 100 individual lights, or a lcd display, anything that would work, to indicate what button in what room was pressed.

I am open to any solution that would provide the functionality I need. Of course I could run 100 pieces of wire and each one go to the control room, but I would like to potentially take advantage of networking capabilities to reduce the cabling.

Any ideas would be helpful.

[bsnut]

Brian,

Here is a easy idea for you, that is a PLC to handle the 200 inputs that you want to do, and use Prop1s, EZ8s, or Prop2s for the different rooms, which the PLC can turn off or turn on.

As, you know I used to work for Six Flags America as full-time electrician. I have PLC software for Allen-Bradley if want to use that manufacturer or you can use this cool processor that is programmed in PBasic and a PLC which is on the same chip by this company call Comfile, which also have freeware software that you can get.

I will be doing haunted attraction for the Baltimore Streetcar Museum in 2011 that I am member of and will be doing drawing for that and if want a basic drawing I can start on them this weekend when I am off work for you.

[gadget-evilusions]

I know I could do a stock up of PLC's. The last machine I built had over 500 I/Os using allen bradley plcs and controls. I want to keep this project using all EFX-TEK products if possible.

Thanks

[JonnyMac]

The HC-8 will let you do that.  You can use one as the master and the other as slaves.  The master can poll the slaves periodically (say every 1/4 second) to check inputs, and either the master or slave can control local outputs.  Connection between notes will be two- or four-wire twisted pair (for half- or full-duplex RS-485)

[bsnut]

All EFX-TEK products haunted house. That is a cool idea. There is a one amusement park in New York call Luna Park that uses one ride manufacturer. Its like showroom for Zamprella and now Brain can have showroom with all EFX-TEK products ;D.

So, Jon how many HC-8s can be on one node. 


 

[JonnyMac]

Each HC-8 can act as a node.  There is a 9-position DIP switch on the board for the address so you could have 512 nodes (addresses 0 to 511), each with eight inputs and eight outputs on an RS-485 buss.  The HC-8 is going to be fun.  It uses the Propeller (what we have in the AP-16+) and opens up a whole world of fun possibilities.

[gadget-evilusions]

I can't wait to see it so that I can start planning. Luckily this project won't need to be put in for about 10 months.

Any haunted house I build, Bsnut, is all EFX-TEK products.