raspberry Pi for Carwash

[br549ms]

I was helping my grandchildren with a project using Raspberry Pi 3 B and found it very easy use and to adapt to almost any type of machine functions. Have any of you used something like a Raspberry or UNO in the carwash, equipment room, etc....

We are thinking about trying it out as a vending controller or LED lighting controller.

 

[slash007]

I'm using an Arduino to control my doors and floor heat. Works great. Just added control to my 2 entrance doors today so that I dont' have to drive down to shut them when they stay open for no reason.

 

[JGinther]

If you get a relay hat for the PI, they can be pretty handy. Although, you can't beat the functionality and reliability of a PLC for basic bit (input/output) control. The PI is good for computing stuff though - like card data, barcode functionality, stuff that requires checking internet data, etc. The arduino is better suited to basic input output stuff, but I'm clumsy writing C++ programs. A python program I wrote for the PI 3B+ was pretty easy and worked well, but it would not stay online for very long... a couple days or 3 at most... Wifi application kept dying requiring a reboot. And that really sucked because I was using it as an internet watchdog. But other than that, it worked very well.

 

[mjwalsh]

We went the UNO route with our current testing & will soon to proceed to update the controls on all of our 32 laundromat commercial washing machines. A word of caution ... it helps to get familiar with Finite State Machine Skills within the UNO ... C & C++. We successfully tested 100% in a garage like back room. Then pretty much identical setup on our washing machine bulk head the PCB turned out to develop electrical noise problems. We also had to eventually buy noise filtering dual 5V & 12V power supplies ... everything in 32+ quantities of course.

We then had to special order about 40 of the industrial duty UNO www.ruggedcircuits.com screw terminal boards because our UNO & MEGA prototype boards had a too vulnerable of terminal surface mount internal solder technicality. Live & learn! It seems like it has been about 12 weeks of trouble free use on a machine in the actual environment so hopefully we will be good to go along with dollar coin acceptance on all the formerly coin slide machines by hopefully May or June ... we will find out once we get rolling doing hopefully 3 or 4 a week at some point. Some things could be done real low cost with RS485 daisy chaining all 32 pieces of equipment as a future upgrade ... not sure if I will go that route. Gee whiz ... would that mean that all 32 of my washers would be compatible with IoT Smartthings or similar???

I did invest some serious time with Fiverr programmers but never did actually sign a contract with them because of a variety of uncertainties they held out on their side.

Maybe someday I will order a Raspberry Pi with its ethernet or add a wifi for 24/7 monitoring-control use ... considering almost no wattage to run it. Right now it might be out of my range programming wise ... not 100% sure either way. Plus considering the extreme capabilities of a Raspberry Pi it might be overkill.

 

[Overachiever]

I used one so I could press my reset button on my old oval track super wash remotely.