Adding a relay to the drying Cycle

[Benjamin]

I'm having to move the catgenie into the center of my house and I'm trying to figure out how to deal with the humidity in the drying cycle. I'm going to put the cat genie into an enclosure that the cat can access. I want to automatically duct away the humid air.

Do you have a recommendation on a pin or wire in the device that I can connect a relay to that can turn on an exhaust fan when the device is running or when the heat cycle is running? 

I currently have the cartridge genius connected. 

[Dan Bell]

Depends on your level of comfort with various technologies. 

The blower fan and heating coil are both 110V/220V Mains powered so I would steer clear of using those pins for triggering anything as you could cause a fire, shock yourself pretty bad, etc etc

If you have any home automation, you could explore using something like Tasmota modules for watching power usage and trigger an event when "watts used" indicates a drying cycle (~1200Watts). Tasmota firmware is capable of triggering actions based on observed wattage. Aka CatGenie uses over 1000 watts so trigger an MQTT message to trigger a relay/fan. 

If that’s all greek then  you could:

Do what I do and have a RaspBerry PI listen to the serial port on the CatGenie/CatGenius and trigger actions based on the output. 

The same could be done with an Arduino or similar.

Lastly you could identify the relay on the CatGenie board that controls the blower/heater and use the Input pins (not output!). But again as I stated at the beginning, I would strongly urge you to AVOID that as you’re very close to Mains power.

Others may have more elegant solutions. These are just the hammers in my bag...

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[Robert Deliën]

> I'm having to move the catgenie into the center of my house and I'm trying to figure out how to deal with the humidity in the drying cycle. I'm going to put the cat genie into an enclosure that the cat can access. I want to automatically duct away the humid air.
> Do you have a recommendation on a pin or wire in the device that I can connect a relay to that can turn on an exhaust fan when the device is running or when the heat cycle is running?
> I currently have the cartridge genius connected.

There are a number of solutions I can think of:
1. Splice a set of wires into the fans motor wires. It’s switched by the only 20 Amp one the board. On 220 volts, that’s enough for an extra fan. On 110 volts, you may want to use that to switch an external relay.
2. If you have an air duct from the cabinet to the outdoors, you cold create a duct to make the box draw air from outside the cabinet. The over-pressure will push the moist air into the outdoors duct.
3. Use a master/slave power-strip with selectable trigger level. As Dan pointed out, the box electric load is significantly higher during the drying cycle. If the selectable trigger level range is wide enough to allow for a level only triggering during drying, you use it to switch your external fan.

Also as Dan pointed out; Pick the solution you feel the mos comfortable with, matching your skills.

Like Dan, I went the home automation route, but that’s because our house has central ventilation, that also needs to respond to bathroom lights, etc.

[Benjamin]

Thank you very much for your recommendations Mindbender and Dan!

Mindbender:

Your second option hadn't even crossed my mind and it is brilliant. It's so simple to use the intake fan to duct in air from outside the cabinet, increasing the pressure. I'll just need to make sure that the rest of the cabinet doesn't leak too much under pressure, including the cat door. 

I also hadn't considered wiring the exhaust fan directly into the box's 120v relay. I'm assuming that the 20A relay is powering both the fan and the heater to need that much power. The whole box pulls 13A during the dry cycle, and the exhaust fan's I've looked at pull less than 1A so there shouldn't be an issue there. 

A smart outlet that checks for the current spike and triggers an exhaust fan would be pretty simple for me to setup for my HA system. The reason I didn't just go with that right away is because there are so many possible failure points (smart outlet, smart switch, HA controller, router, internet service). 

I'm not sure though if my concern about failure points is really that big a deal, since this failing to trigger occasionally wouldn't cause any severe problems. 

Dan, what power outlet are you using? I have a Sonoff POW 16A outlet that is currently not being used that I could use for that setup. I was running a modified espeasy on it, and it wasn't capable of reading the power level, but I haven't tried Tasmota on it. 

There's been hardware shortages here so I've been waiting for the cabinet to get in stock and I still don't have it. I need a very specific size and my carpentry skills aren't to the point that I can build my own that wont end up being an eyesore. 

[Dan Bell]

I’m using mostly these Teckin branded smart outlets all reprogrammed with Tuya-Convert to use Tasmota instead. Unfortunately Teckin like a lot of the other brands who use ESP8266 powered smart devices, started using HTTPS for their over-the-air updates and this has broken Tuya-Convert. So to reprogram these modules now you have to forcibly open them which damages the plastic case of the outlet and manually connect a programmer to the ESP8266 (or similar) 

I’ve just ordered some smart outlets from TopGreener as they reportedly still support Tuya-Convert. I’ll do my best to report back here if I’m successful: 

 TOPGREENER Smart Mini Wi-Fi Plug with Energy Monitoring, Smart Outlet, Control Lights and Appliances from Anywhere, No Hub Required, Compatible with A

I use OpenHab as my home automation solution and it easily handles triggering events based on watts reported by smart outlets running Tasmota. As I may have mentioned, Tasmota also supports creating local rules on the device and can trigger events even without something like OpenHab. 

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[ron klo]

There are power bars/strips that monitor 1 of the outlets and turn the other outlets on when that 1 monitored one consumes power. They are intended for things like a stereo system that turns on the tuner, turntable, cassette deck etc when the Amp is turned on. ..or for a computer turning a printer scanner etc on.

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[ron klo]

One thing I like with the Techin plugs and their "Smart life" app is the timer.. much longer run time than the ewelink. I'm sure u can do the same with Tasmoto but this works out of the box. My grand daughter was always turning on the dishwasher so I installed 1 techin under the washer in line with the ac input and plugged in another above the counter. That one turns on the other through the the app and the scene feature in the app and the app turns off the plug after 2-1/2 hrs.... the time it takes for the full wash/dry cycle. I was lucky and got a few plugs from a guy on marketplace..  2 for $5 !!! 

[Robert Deliën]

> Your second option hadn't even crossed my mind and it is brilliant. It's so simple to use the intake fan to duct in air from outside the cabinet, increasing the pressure. I'll just need to make sure that the rest of the cabinet doesn't leak too much under pressure, including the cat door.

Make sure the fan draws in dry, room temperature air from outside the box, and that the hot damp air from drying the pellets has a way to escape the cabinet.

> I also hadn't considered wiring the exhaust fan directly into the box's 120v relay. I'm assuming that the 20A relay is powering both the fan and the heater to need that much power. The whole box pulls 13A during the dry cycle, and the exhaust fan's I've looked at pull less than 1A so there shouldn't be an issue there.

20A is more than enough to power an extra fan, even at 120VAC. (Which electricians here in Europe consider almost safe to touch :-)

> A smart outlet that checks for the current spike and triggers an exhaust fan would be pretty simple for me to setup for my HA system. The reason I didn't just go with that right away is because there are so many possible failure points (smart outlet, smart switch, HA controller, router, internet service).

Yeah, that’s what I meant with a Master/Slave power strip. I guess that terminology is no longer allowed in these post modern times, so no surprised it’s named differently now (like many things).

> I'm not sure though if my concern about failure points is really that big a deal, since this failing to trigger occasionally wouldn't cause any severe problems.

Depends on how picky your cat is, I think. One of ours is very picky, and not shy to find an alternative spot.

> There's been hardware shortages here so I've been waiting for the cabinet to get in stock and I still don't have it. I need a very specific size and my carpentry skills aren't to the point that I can build my own that wont end up being an eyesore.

There, and everywhere else. Especially lumber, I was told...

[Dan Bell]

I can now confirm the TopGreener plug (linked below) is still compatible with Tuya-Convert. Meaning you can install Tasmota using the over-the-air update process and do not need to physically open the smart plug to remove the factory firmware.

After you install Tasmota, you can set a value (in Watts) for PowerHigh and the SmartPlug will send an MQTT message when that value is reached or exceeded. This could be used to trigger other devices without the need for a full home automation solution like OpenHab.