www.coridium.us/forum

I have my DINkit up and running and I need to drive four pool valve actuators
(24 VAC, .75A) and a few other relays to control the pool motor and furnace. I
need some very basic help and have the following questions:

1) Any good books/manuals/web sites along the lines of "How to drive hardware
with your ARMexpress for Dummies".

2) Can I use the ULN2803 to drive an AC load or just DC?

3) Can/should I mount a chip socket on the board so I can change the
chips in the future once I learn what I am doing?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Good day. I have uploaded a good text that I downloaded for free off of some
web-based book reading sight. I haven't read it cover to cover, but have made
use of the reference therein on more than one ocassion. I offer it to you for
your use and consumption, as well as the other members of the group.

Regarding specifics for interface to control AC motors/valves, I defer to the
kind Sir Bruce, as he has about a gajillion years doing this stuff, and is
better informed than I.

Good luck!

-t

> > 1) Any good books/manuals/web sites along the lines of "How to drive
hardware with your ARMexpress for Dummies".

There's one linked to on the Coridium Support page, while it is a different
flavor of BASIC a lot of the concepts apply, written by Klaus.

This link is no longer there, but Claus's books for the BASIC stamp are at (there is an english link there too)
http://www.ckuehnel.ch/

> > 2) Can I use the ULN2803 to drive an AC load or just DC?

ULN2803 are basically 8 big Darlington transistors in a DIP, so they can only
pull down or not (current to 500 mA). Great for driving a relay, but NOT AC

> > 3) Can/should I mount a chip socket on the board so I can change the
> > chips in the future once I learn what I am doing?

The DINkit is pretty easy to solder, everything through hole. And a socket
might be a failure mechanism, don't know if you can run inductive things through
those pins, you'd have to check the socket spec. So my answer would be probably
not.