Why in earth even use a servo. Just have an arduino or rasbberypi and either plug it into the keyboard dock for pure simplicity and send the right code for each key, or a bit of software on the computer which monitors USB and apples the signal.
USB Controlled Servo that can push a button
- Thread starter snedie
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You should be able to achieve this with off-the-shelf home automation kit like LightwaveRF. Some remote control sockets plus a 'wifi link' box would allow you to control them from either a local pc or remotely over the internet.
No offence but if you had any idea how expensive the true solutions for this setup were you too would be looking at fingers pushing buttons. Just to turn off two of the 18 devices would cost around £350, cheaper for larger setups been in the range of £1400 for all 18.
Why would we spend that when we can operate a perfectly safe switch?
Are you sure you have enough spare network ports there?.
The solutions by Hades/York would be the best and most reliable way I imagine (do they do a UK plug version though?).
If you really want to go for a hacky solution then you could still use infra-red. This may work:
- Buy infra-red powered plugs, e.g. these for £4.35 - you can program each plug with your own infra-red command from an existing remote or whatever.
I actually use a free LIME infrared plug I got sent to turn a powerstrip with my TV/AV receiver etc on from my Harmony remote, works very well.
- Buy a USB Infra-red Toy v2 for £11.83 from here
- Use WinLIRC to send the IR commands to the infra-red plug you want to power on/off (you can learn the correct IR code from the remote you used earlier)
Dude you're a genius, total cost would be under £30 for the entire rack with gang sockets. I'm going to buy one of the sockets and controllers and see how that works out. Thanks for the info mate
Ideally if we had the cash we would use an APC solution, I have a number of their UPS devices which work great and last for years and parts are readily available.
Soldato
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Have a look at Tripplite, Cyber Power or Aten (loads more companies do them); remote PDU's are a lot lot cheaper than the figures you're quoting - Aten's and Cyber Power's 20 port PDU's are typically around £450-500 and you can pick them up a bit cheaper than that if you shop around.
Can also pick up bargains on the auction site.
Either way, a remote PDU is the proper and most reliable way of doing it. However if you want to bodge it then look at using a RPi coupled with a servo driver.
The IR controlled power terminals look to be a very safe method to accomplish this, reliability is yet to be determined. Even at half the price I quoted £450-£500 is still a lot of money to lay out for a lab environment. If we where designing this for a production project obviously the cost would have to be budgeted for.
Soldato
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As mentioned, if you actually search around then you can find some bargains, eg - £150 for a APC 24 port remote PDU off the auction site, which is very little for a proper, reliable, hassle free solution.
Probably not much more than an RPi and associated parts tbh, let alone the tweaking time. This sounds like something I'd do though, ya know, just because