Humidity Controller Wiring Advice Needed

[Richierich]

I bought a £30 eBay special humidity controller for my humidifier. I have the humidifier mounted in a fridge with a socket in the fridge for ease of removing the humidifier from the cabinet for cleaning (IP56 rated).

I enclose a photo of the wiring diagram on the top of the humidity controller, I can't for the life of me figure out how to wire it, can anyone tell me where to stick the wires, so to speak....if I wire terminal 2 & 7 to neutral do I then connect neutral from the humidifier to terminal 1 and then live from the humidifier straight to the live feed into terminal 8?

Thanks,

Rich

[wheels]

It looks the same as mine. You connect a live from the mains to terminals 2 and 7 and a neutral (negative) from the mains to terminal 8.

The live to the humidifier is then taken from terminal 1.

Neutral (negative) for the humidifier is straight from the mains.

Terminals 7 and 8 power the hygrostat and only the live is switched (between 2 and 1).

I don't know whether it's relevant, but my electrical guy advised the use of a relay - something to do with the distance between the contacts needing to be 3mm (rather than the amperage? being switched), I think!

I hope that makes sense.

Phil

[Richierich]

Thanks Phil, I think you reflected what I had written earlier, I honestly spent about an hour and a half messing about on Saturday morning.

I know what you are saying when you say to use a relay, but I don't know what that means, I kind of figured by using something that could switch 220VAC I would not need a relay, can't imagine the current on the humidifier is that high......

[Zulululu]

Wheels is right, as a rule you always switch the live wire and connect the neutral to the appliance.
Using a relay is always a good idea as the controller will then only switch the load of the relay's coil instead if say a heater element which over time will mess up the contact in your controller.That way you only have to replace the relay which is usually a lot cheaper than a controller.
In that case the relay coil will be connected as the LOAD on the controller and the live to your equipment will go through the N/O or N/C contact of the relay.

[wheels]

You would use a relay if the item you are switching needs more amps than the hygrostat is capable of switching: in this case 10 amps 220V AC. The relay keeps the hygrostat completely separate from the 'load'. Using a relay would (say) allow you to use a 12v hygrostat to switch a 240v piece of equipment.

I think that the thing about the 'gap' between the contacts is something to do with electrical safety. My mate builds specialist electrical controls, so I just did what he told me to!

Phil

[Richierich]

All wired up and working, not going to use a relay, if the contacts start to cause me issues I will replace the controller, although I will make sure a RCD is in the socket I am using it in just in case.

I am surprised to see how quickly the temperature start to drop when the humidifier kicks in and the humidity drop when the compressor kicks in, not surprised it happens, just surprised at the pace.

Just need to give the fridge a bloody good clean, it's got a lot of questionable mould in there, rather black looking!!

[Kaiser Soze]

Sorry to drag an old thread back from the dead, but here goes...

I purchased a CK-100 humidity controller on ebay. The wiring diagram for the controller is here. This diagram isn't particularly clear, although looking at the original post in this thread, the devices are similar, the pins are just labelled different numbers.

So logic would tell me that:

Incoming active/load from the mains would be connected to pins 2 and 4.
Outgoing load to the dehumidifier would be connected to pin 3
Outgoing load to the humidifier would be connected to pin 5
Incoming neutral from the mains would be connected to pin 1
Incoming neutral from the mains would also be connected to outgoing neutral for both humidifier and dehumidifier.

Is it possible for someone to take a few minutes and confirm this or provide further advice?

I will always get my sparky mate to check the wiring before I use it, I just like to wire it up before I take it to him, as he's a fair distance away and it means that he doesn't need to dick around with wiring it for me!

Thanks all!

[wheels]

Welcome Kaiser Soze. Looking at those instructions, all I'll say is that I think you may be correct. I wouldn't like to commit myself though.

Phil

[Yannis]

Your wiring is correct. Whether humidifier (or dehumidifier) will be connected to pin 3 or 5 depends on setting mode to humidify or dehumidify.

The problem is that one device always will be on so your system will not be efficient.

[Kaiser Soze]

Thanks guys!

Wheels - I have some instructions in english, but they don't offer a whole lot more than the chinese version, they just indicate where the dehumidifying load should go.

Yannis - yes, it was only after the unit arrived that I realised that there was only a single relay doing the switching. You can set a humidity difference so the dehumidifier won't kick in till the difference is greater than the set point (i.e. 5% over the set point), which means that the switching happens less often, but you're still going to be running one of the devices at all times.

I also just bought an arduino, so I might have a longer term project to hook that up to 2 relays to do the switching and build my own humidity controller.

Thanks again for the advice...

[Zulululu]

Hi Kaiser,
Had a look from what I see you always switch your live wire so the live would go to pin #1 and#4. Your neutral goes to pin#2 and to the one side of you load (humidifier whatever). Then you connect the other wire from you load to pin #3. In other words you would connect the two wires from the humidifier one to pin #2 together with the neutral wire, then the other wire from the humidifier to pin #4 . Pin #3 and 4 is a normally open contact which will close at what you have set it to and open once you have reached the desired setting. If you put the live on pin #4 ( your common contact) you can change the way it functions by using pin#5 ( normally closed contact) to connect your load to, that way it will start up and run until it reaches a desired setting then switch off.Both the circuits show the load connected over the normally open contact so try that first.

[Kaiser Soze]

Thanks for that!

How can you tell from the diagram that active should go to pin1 and neutral to pin2? It makes sense, I just can't see from the wiring diagram where it is specified which order active and neutral go into pins 1 and 2.

[Zulululu]

Hi Kaiser,
It is not that critical pins #1 & 2 supply power to the module and usually can be switched around no problem .But you should always switch the live wire as I mentioned, if you do that right you will be okay.
If you are still having a problem let me know.

[Kaiser Soze]

Thanks for your help Zulululu. I see, active and load can be swapped around ok to the unit. I am switching the active on the relay, so all good there. I wired it up last night, and will take it to my mate to double check this weekend. I'll let you know how I go.

As an aside, the wiring diagram for the sensor indicates 3 wires - blue, brown and black. Surprisingly, the sensor I got (and their picture in their ebay listing) had 4 wires - red, green, yellow and black. The language barrier meant that they kept emailing me the same manual with the original wiring diagram - I don't think that they understood my question!

Anyway, I managed to use google translate to work out the colours marked on the unit. For reference, anyone buying this CK-100 unit, the sensor wires go as follows:

pin9 - green
pin10 - red
pin11 - yellow
pin12 - black

[Headonis]

Hi Guys,

I too have been using the CK-100 Humidity controller to monitor and control the humidity in my curing chamber. The controller is activating either the Ultrasonic Humidifier to increase humidity or a small computer fan to extract the humidity if the Humidity goes above the set point. All was OK until I noticed on the weekend that error code E3 was flashing on the screen? The extraction fan was running continuously during this time, but the Humidifier would not come on when required. Eventually the screen flash increased in frequency until the unit automatically shut off? The manual has a very brief description of what error code (E3) represents (albeit very brief and vague) stating that there is a contactor error with the unit? Any idea what this may be, what has caused it - or how to rectify it? I have contacted the supplier via Ebay and they have suggested that i need to post it back to them (from Australia to China) and they will refund my payment, but I would obviously prefer to fix the unit (if possible) as i have a couple of KG of different Salami currently curing, along with a Lonzino, Bresaola and a 9kg Prosciutto. I want to get my humidity back up and under control before case hardening sets in.