8-RELAY EXPANSION CARD FOR RASPBERRY PI

www.sequentmicrosystems.com

USER'S GUIDE VERSION 1.1

GENERAL DESCRIPTION................................................................................................................................. 2
BOARD LAYOUT ............................................................................................................................................. 3
BLOCK DIAGRAM ........................................................................................................................................... 3
COMPONENT DESCRIPTION .......................................................................................................................... 4
CONFIGURATION JUMPERS .......................................................................................................................... 4
RELAY HEADERS ............................................................................................................................................ 5
POWER REQUIREMENTS ............................................................................................................................... 6
MECHANICAL SPECIFICATIONS ..................................................................................................................... 7
SOFTWARE SETUP ......................................................................................................................................... 8
AD-ON CARDS ............................................................................................................................................. 10
LED-CARD ................................................................................................................................................ 10
BREAK-OUT CARD ................................................................................................................................... 11
DIN-RAIL KIT for RASPBERRY PI ............................................................................................................... 12
MEGA-IO EXPANSION CARD.................................................................................................................... 13

1
GENERAL DESCRIPTION

The 8-RELAY card is a stackable expansion card for Raspberry Pi B+, 2, 3 and Zero. It offers a compact
and inexpensive solution for adding up to 64 relays to a Raspberry Pi project. Two of the Raspberry Pi’s
GPIO pins are used for I2C communication, leaving 24 GPIO pins available for the user.

2
BOARD LAYOUT

BLOCK DIAGRAM

3
COMPONENT DESCRIPTION

The top 40 pin header plugs into the Raspberry Pi GPIO header and passed through the pins to the next
MEGA-IO expansion card.

The eight relays are numbered from upper left to lower right. Numbering the Relays is important to
associate them correctly with the Relay Headers and Relay LEDs. The Relays are SPST, with three output
pins labeled COM, NO and NC.

The Relay LEDs are right angle, to permit visual inspection of the relays status when multiple cards are
stacked.

CONFIGURATION JUMPERS

Stack Level. Three jumpers permit addressing multiple MEGA-IO cards on the I2C bus. No jumpers need
to be installed if only one card is present. If two or more cards are stacked up, the card is addressed as
follows:

ID Jumper 000 001 010 011 100 101 110 111

4
RELAY HEADERS

5
POWER REQUIREMENTS

The 8-RELAY card requires +5V power, supplied either from the Raspberry Pi expansion bus, or from its
own 2.1mm power jack. The on-board relays are connected to the +5V.

Only one +5V source can be used to power both the Raspberry Pi and the 8-Relay card.

Raspberry Pi 3 current consumption: 250 mA @ +5V

8-RELAY Card current consumption: 10 mA @ +5V (all relays OFF)

750 mA @ +5V (all relays ON)

The USB connector which powers the Raspberry Pi can supply maximum 1.5A.

The jack which powers the 8-RELAY card can supply 3A. We strongly recommend using this jack and a 5V
regulated power supply rated at 3A or higher.

The 8-RELAY card can be stacked up to eight levels. A multi-stack configuration can be powered from
any of the cards. A four stack needs 300 mA for electronic circuits, leaving 2.5A for relays. With some
margin of error, not more than 24 relays can be ON at the same time.

In the rare event that your application uses four 8-RELAY cards and requires that all relays be ON at
the same time, you need a power source that can supply minimum 4A. You also need to split the
power cable and feed the +5V through two 8-RELAY cards.

6
MECHANICAL SPECIFICATIONS

7
SOFTWARE SETUP

The 8-Relay board occupies the I2C addresses from 0x20 to 0x27.

1. Have your Raspberry Pi ready with the latest OS.

2. Install the Wiring Pi library (many thanks to Gordon Henderson)

3. Enable I2C communication:

~$ sudo raspi-config

4. Install the relay8 software from github.com:

~$ git clone https://github.com/SequentMicrosystems/relay8-rpi.git

5. ~$ cd /home/pi/relay8-rpi

6. ~/relay8-rpi$ sudo make install

7. ~/relay8-rpi$ relay8

The program will respond with a list of available commands.

Type "relay8 -h" for online help.

After installing the software, you can update it to the latest version with the commands:

1. ~$ cd /home/pi/relay8-rpi

2. ~/relay8-rpi$ git pull

8
3. ~/relay8-rpi$ sudo make install

9
AD-ON CARDS

LED-CARD

The LED card plugs into the Raspberry Pi expansion connector. Its main function is to show in top-view
the status of the relays, but it can be used as a general purpose, 32 LED card to show the status of any
input or output.

Any LED can be turned on or off using the command “relay8 led [1-32] on/off”.

The LED card can show the status of relays from up to four 8-Relay cards. If more than four cards are
used, the LED card cannot be used since the I2C address will conflict with the relays.

10
BREAK-OUT CARD

The Break-out card plugs into the Raspberry Pi expansion connector and brings all the IO pins to screw-
type terminal blocks.

Break-out card top view

Break-out card back view

Raspberry Pi with Break-out card

11
DIN-RAIL KIT for RASPBERRY PI

The DIN-Rail Kit permits mounting any Raspberry Pi on a DIN-Rail. It contains all the necessary screws
and stand-offs.

12
MEGA-IO EXPANSION CARD

The MEGA-IO is a stackable expansion card for Raspberry Pi B+, 2, 3 and Zero. Up to four MEGA-IO
and/or 8-RELAY cards can be mixed in the same stack. The MEGA-IO card adds the following I/O
functions:

 Eight on-board relays

The MEGA-IO card can be mixed with the 8-Relay card on the same stack

13