Help with Electricity for Automatic Coop

[Big Bubba]

I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to electricity. I'd appreciate any help offered.

I order a semi automatic car antenna for the first step - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00467EHJ8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1. I think the hookup is simple enough.



Only a red and green wire come out of the unit. I connected the red and green to the corresponding red and green as seen below.



The switch has a red and black wire coming out. The black, per the directions, is the negative ground. I did not do anything with that wire. The red I tried connecting to a 12V 1.5A electrical switch. I have a circuit tester and it verifies electricity is being fed into it, but the darn thing does nothing.

Any ideas what I should be doing here?

Again, thanks for any help.

 

[Ifish]

The black wire needs hooked to a ground on teh switch you hooked the red to, or to the ground wire that is with the positive wire feeding the power. You have power being fed, but the circuit cannot be completed until the ground wire is hooked to a ground.


Think of it like a battery. Positive terminal and negative terminal. You need the red to positive and black to negative. You could use a small 12v battery to test it.

 

[Big Bubba]

Well, here goes another stupid question. How do I ground it? The electricity is coming from a plugged in outlet and will be hooked to the antenna outside.

 

[tcstoehr]

Not really, but I can try.
The switch needs to drive the motor in both directions. So it should be capable of switching the polarity of the wires going to the motor. I would think the switch would have to be connected to ground. If it was just a light bulb, that would be different. The switch would just have to make or break a connection in either power lead. But this antenna switch must route + to one wire and - to the other, and then reverse that to run the motor in the opposite direction.

If it was me I would trying connecting the motor wires directly to a 12V power source and reversing them to see if the antenna is indeed driven in both directions.

It seems to me that if you don't connect the switch to ground(-) then your motor will never have access to ground and it cannot work. Your motor must be connected to ground somehow. If not through the from the switch, then how. And if it is through the switch, the switch must have a ground connection.

 

[Ifish]

Is the outlet a standard 110v electrical outlet? If so then that is going to destroy the circuitry.

You need a source of 12v for the antenna. A deep cycle battery would provide tons of power for a simple antenna. You could also use a transformer in the standard outlet to convert to 12v.

 

[Big Bubba]

It is a standard outlet. I have a 12V 1.5A power source plugged into it.

 

[tcstoehr]

Well, here goes another stupid question. How do I ground it? The electricity is coming from a plugged in outlet and will be hooked to the antenna outside.

You might be thinking about AC power. In your house, AC power is grounded. Forget about that. DC power simply has two leads, one positive (power) and one negative (ground). Both are required for any DC device to do work. Your switch's job is to send positive and negative through those two wires, reversable.
And ditto what the other guy said. Do not plug this your antenna into a wall outlet. (kaboom!)

 

[Ifish]

It is a standard outlet. I have a 12V 1.5A power source plugged into it.

ah ok. then there should be a place for the black wire to hook up to the 12v transformer. It should then ground/complete the circuit. If it doesn't have a negative terminal, it may not be the right part.

 

[tcstoehr]

ah ok. then there should be a place for the black wire to hook up to the 12v transformer. It should then ground/complete the circuit.

Agreed. And isn't the real problem that the switch is not connected to ground? The switch must have access to ground in order to rout ground to the motor.

 

[Ifish]

Agreed. And isn't the real problem that the switch is not connected to ground? The switch must have access to ground in order to rout ground to the motor.

The way I understand it is the red and black wires come off the antenna switch. The red wire was hooked up to the transformer in the outlet, but the black wire is not. So the black wire needs to be hooked up to the transformer. The transformer should then ground the circuit for everything to work properly.