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Showing results for tags 'motorised'.
Found 2 results
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I have a pathological hatred of typical 2-port valves. They all seem to be based on the same ancient, crappy, design of a synchronous AC motor that gets hot when driven to stall, via a micro-switch hacked-in current limiting resistor (that also gets hot) dissipating something in the order of 6 Watts. Getting on a bit in years, I've lost count of the number of actuator heads I've had to replace and the price of them was beginning to feel more like a tax on owning a heating system. The final straw came on a frosty X-mas morning when the heating didn't come on because... That was a couple of years ago and because SFix & TSn were closed for the festivities, I enlisted a Raspberry Pi, stepper motor and 3D printer to be hero just for one day. This episode gave me a taste for getting back control of my heating system and I have not looked back since. These days I use a bunch of drayton 2-port valve bodies (£3 Ebay) with a micro metal gearbox motors (<£5) driven by Pololu H-bridge constant current drivers (£5) mounted on some scrap metal: My question is... do people around here just put up with the typical Honeywell/Drayton valves circa £60 or do they go for something more exotic (that I've yet to find) or are they rolling their own like me?
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Following on from @lizzie's topic on external roller blinds, I've been wondering about the best way to run the power source to these. There will be 2, both on the south side of the house, one upstairs (south east corner) and one ground floor (south west corner) but both on the same face. I had a quick chat with MBC and it's a choice between something coming from under the slab, then wired along the outside of the building under the cladding, or penetrate the wall and use grommets and seal before the insulation goes in. I'm also wondering whether I need any external power points. There will be some in the garage, but nothing on the south side. I'm not sure what I would use these for, but that doesn't mean I won't want or need any at some point in the future. Any thoughts, anyone?
