The S-Play is a versatile tool for controlling your show with triggers connected to outboard switches and sensors, and the I/O Extender increases that flexibility exponentially. But how does one go about setting all this up? There are a wide variety of different types of sensors and most of them will work great with your S-Play system. But you have to be very careful about how you set these devices up in order to prevent causing damage to your S-Play. Here is a quick guide to help get you started!
Before connecting a sensor or switch, it's a good idea to understand how the digital inputs on the S-Play function, and even more important to understand how certain sensors work. In this article we will look at a few examples
For the S-Play it's simple. Each digital input on the S-Play and I/O Extender represents an open circuit waiting to be closed. When you create a trigger using a digital input, you decide if you want the trigger to activate either when the circuit is closed or when it is open. Most commonly, people want a trigger to activate when the circuit is closed, or "made". For all of our examples, we will have a trigger set to "Activate on Make:
With the S-Play configured this way, If you connect a wire to the GND and another wire to IN1, all you need to do is touch those two wires together to activate the trigger. If you have the trigger set to "Activate on Break" the trigger will activate upon disconnecting the two wires.
Regardless of the sensor you use, this is how the S-Play works. The main issue here is that this is not how many sensors work.
Almost every sensor is designed to send some kind of voltage down the line in one form or another. Here are some common sensors:
All of these sensors are designed to pass whatever voltage that is put into it when activated. These particular sensors are all rated for 24VDC, meaning that you apply 24V to the sensor and when whatever is supposed to happen happens, 24V is sent back out. This is all well and good, but if you connect a sensor like this to the S-Play you run the risk of damaging the digital input because the device is only looking for you to close the circuit, it does not want to see voltage. In order to make these kinds of sensors work, you need to put a relay into the mix:
This relay is designed to either close (top switch or SW1) or open a circuit (Bottom switch or SW2) when it receives 24V. It does not pass the 24V. You would connect the green and blue wires to the output of the sensor and the ground to the power supply that is providing the 24V to the system:
It is possible to find Sensors with built in relays, but this is how most setups work when it comes to the kinds of sensors that pass voltage.
There is another kind of sensor that is worth mentioning. The Photo beam sensor:
This specific sensor operates at 24V, but it has an NPN style of output, which means that instead of passing the 24V back out, it sends a control voltage. In this case, the sensor sends out 3.5VDC. This is not enough voltage to close a 24V relay. You may find a relay that operates on 3.5 volts, but instead of doing that, you can connect this sensor's output directly to one of the I/O Extender's ANALOG inputs. With the analog input on the S-Play, you tell the trigger to activate when the voltage of the circuit crosses a threshold, from 0-10V:
In this example, we are telling the S-Play to activate the trigger when Analog Input 1 exceeds 3000mv, or 3V. When the beam of the sensor is broken, the sensor sends 3.5V to the S-Play and activates the trigger.
As always, if you have specific questions or concerns about your setup, we always recommend checking in with us before attempting to wire a system up. We are happy to assist you!