Controlling a Actuator

[troy.lynch]

I'm interested in getting a couple Actuators setup to open windows seeing its starting to get warm out. These are what I'm looking at.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/10mm-s-6-Li...53.m1438.l2649

By the looks of it I would need some sort of relay that connects up to a 12vdc power supply to provide enough power to push the actuator. Anyone have experience with this on what I should use as a relay?

[logbuilder]

The device you referenced needs 12v 3A DC. You can easily find a wall charger for that and wire it to the actuator. Then you could plug the wall charger into a z-wave (or whatever you use) outlet to control it. I just did the same with an outdoor siren and it works well.

[Wade]

OP, pardon the tangent but I've been interested in doing something similar and have a question. How are you planning to control travel? Limit switches at full open/close? Timed operation? Sounds like you may be early in planning but would you mind describing your complete configuration if you have it worked out? Thanks.

[drhtmal]

I only see 2 wires on that actuator. Based on that I think you will need to reverse the polarity of the connection to make it operate up and down. To extend it you hook red to positive and black to negative. To retract it you would reverse the polarity and hook black to positive and red to negative. Think about it like this. If you hookup a DC motor to a battery it spins in one direction, reverse the wires and it spins the other way. For that you will need relays a simple switch will not work. This is only a guess since there is nothing in the specs as to how to operate it.

The specs say it has built in limit switches. The limit switches probably stop it from extending and retracting so if you need to know the position of the cylinder you will need something that can measure the travel length.