Bizarro252
06-23-2017, 09:48 PM
Hello!
I was up waaaaay to late the other day and dinking around on Amazon, usually not a great combination BUT I had an idea. I have been wanting to get a battery powered air pump for a while now just to have SOMETHING to use in case a power outage. I have a UPS on my computer and figured I could always use that but it sounds like they are rather inefficient at low wattage so it would not power even an air pump for long.
Now there are battery powered air pumps out there, but I wanted one that would detect power loss and switch on automatically, these also exist, but why buy one when you can make it? Especially if you A) Already have a battery operated pump, or B) you want to do even MORE things when the power goes out.
The secret is in a AC sensing relay, I bought this one as its cheap, pre-packaged and has a lot of nice saftey features already built in:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017743I7S/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I de-soldered a connection inside the pump that went from the battery pack to the motor, and put the relay inline, one wire to the common rail and the other to the 'normally closed' rail, drilled a hole in the side of the pump housing to route the wires through and connected the whole thing up to a spare port on my air splitter. Apparently the one way valve on the air pump works to keep the pressure contained in the system while the other pump is on so that worked out great.
Just installed and tested it and it works great! According to reviews I read the batteries (2xD cells) will last 12-20 hours - BAM!
110627
I was up waaaaay to late the other day and dinking around on Amazon, usually not a great combination BUT I had an idea. I have been wanting to get a battery powered air pump for a while now just to have SOMETHING to use in case a power outage. I have a UPS on my computer and figured I could always use that but it sounds like they are rather inefficient at low wattage so it would not power even an air pump for long.
Now there are battery powered air pumps out there, but I wanted one that would detect power loss and switch on automatically, these also exist, but why buy one when you can make it? Especially if you A) Already have a battery operated pump, or B) you want to do even MORE things when the power goes out.
The secret is in a AC sensing relay, I bought this one as its cheap, pre-packaged and has a lot of nice saftey features already built in:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017743I7S/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I de-soldered a connection inside the pump that went from the battery pack to the motor, and put the relay inline, one wire to the common rail and the other to the 'normally closed' rail, drilled a hole in the side of the pump housing to route the wires through and connected the whole thing up to a spare port on my air splitter. Apparently the one way valve on the air pump works to keep the pressure contained in the system while the other pump is on so that worked out great.
Just installed and tested it and it works great! According to reviews I read the batteries (2xD cells) will last 12-20 hours - BAM!
110627