Thursday, 31 May 2012

Wireless and Wired Emergency Stop System

This circuit allows a cheap or discarded wireless doorbell set (i.e. transmitter and receiver unit) to be used as a remote emergency stop on a high-power electrical motor or motor controller system.

When the button on the wireless doorbell unit is pressed, the resulting 0 V signal from the receiver unit (‘motor E-Stop’) causes PNP  transistor T1 to be turned on. Via  transistor T2, latching relay Re1 then changes state. The same is achieved when the wired Motor E-Stop button, S1, is pressed. The reset button, S2, must be pressed to reverse the state of the latching relay.

The choice of T1 and T2 is not critical they are general purpose, low voltage PNP and NPN switching  transistors  respectively,  for  which  many equivalents exist.

As an EMC precaution, small capacitors (100 pF) are fitted across base resistors R1 and R2, preventing the motor  from being shut down by external  electrical noise and interference. The  set and reset coils of the latching relay  each have a flyback diode to prevent  back emf peaks damaging T1 and T2. The contacts of the latching relay can  be used to switch a more powerful  relay, or a motor driver.

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