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Smoke system wiring and integration

Swingwing

Swingwing

Active Member
I am working on my panel, Dynon, with an ACM board and need help integrating the smoke system.

I am not well-versed in electrical system design so this is my best description of what I think I need to do:

I put an "Arm" switch in the panel to provide 12-volt power to the smoke system. I want to turn the smoke on and off with one of the momentary switches (push on, push off) on a Tosten grip. Is there a relay or control board that I should use? I also need a open/close contact to ground in the relay/board to connect to one of the aux inputs on the ACM so that the display will show if the system is on or off.

I'm open to suggestions. thank you for the help!
 
Swingwing said:
I am working on my panel, Dynon, with an ACM board and need help integrating the smoke system.


I'm open to suggestions. thank you for the help!
Click to expand...

A few suggestions.

1. Use a "Toggle Switch" instead of a momentary on/off. Otherwise you WILL at some point be "ON" when you think you are "OFF". I am not sure which is more embarrassing, while in a flight with friends and the picture is taken and you are the one "OFF" instead of "ON" (or vice versa), **or** accidentally being "ON" while the plane is in the hangar.

2. Use a relay capable of significant current as you might later change to a different pump that uses more current.

3. Wire in a "SMOKE SYSTEM IS ON" indicator light.

4. Decide if a "CLEAN" on/off is critically important to you. If so, include solenoids that open and close for on and off. With this approach, you also need to decide if "ARM" simply makes power available to relays etc. or if it also turn on the pump so the solenoids are pressurized for instant "ON".

Finally, it does NOT have to be as complicated as mentioned above. An appropriate heavy duty (capable of 20A) switch on the panel can turn the pump on and off and provide casual smoke that probably work for 99% of smokers. It is a matter of preference. I use both and prefer the "big switch" right next to the throttle.

"Your Mileage May Vary"
 
jclark said:
A few suggestions.

1. Use a "Toggle Switch" instead of a momentary on/off. Otherwise you WILL at some point be "ON" when you think you are "OFF". I am not sure which is more embarrassing, while in a flight with friends and the picture is taken and you are the one "OFF" instead of "ON" (or vice versa), **or** accidentally being "ON" while the plane is in the hangar.
Click to expand...

Somebody on our team did this exact thing this year, good thing the crowd was only 500,000 people who saw it. Prior to the event he thought his momentary switch was cool, he vowed to change it out as soon as he landed.

I very much like a switch even Ray Charles could identify as being ON/OFF. In formation with smoke you can't look down.
 
What I did

I used a Smoking Airplanes system that came with a toggle and a momentary on. The toggle has 3 positions..Armed, On, and Off. If I'm doing a group formation as James mentioned, the On position is a switch and forget smoke on, but I usually have it in the Armed/Momentary position which is tied into a push-button on the throttle lever which I love for short bursts or deer clearing/mosquito dusting passes. No need to reach for the switch, which is located just forward of the throttle.
 
Latching relay

If you want to use the momentary switch on your tOsten grip, you will need to incorporate a latching relay. Bunch on Amazon. You can incorporate a ground along with it for a descrete in your panel.
 
Latching relay circuit

I wanted to do exactly what you described.

1) Smoke system enable on panel
2) Left stick switch is push to turn on and push again to turn off
3) Right stick switch is momentary on
4) You need relays to carry the load
5) panel light lights if the system is pumping oi l/ making smoke

Below is a design diagram
 

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This system uses a panel switch to turn Smoke ON or OFF, or to enable the stick grip on/off function.

SMOKE.pdf


http://www.vx-aviation.com/sprocket/photos/panel_elec/schematics-2/SMOKE.pdf

Vern
 

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I have only this past couple of days finished the electronics for my system, with the same goal as you - to control it via a momentary switch on my stick.

Lots of feedback was "use a latching relay" however all the relays i could find locally here required you to switch power to signal the relay to latch on or off. With the Tosten stick, it's not possible to run power through the stick - you can only provide a ground (as the stick internally has a single ground wire for all controls on the stick). I needed a latching relay which was switched by ground, which i couldn't find. I went down the rabbit hole trying to work it out - then cracked it and busted out an Arduino.

It's a little complicated at first glance, but in simple terms i will have a single progressive switch on the panel: ARMED and ON. In the ARMED mode it uses a relay to give power to an Arduino and to a second relay. The Arduino is then used to ground the second relay to turn on / off the smoke pump. It also gives discrete system status messages, as well as audio output.

In the ON mode, the second position of the switch grounds the pump relay to turn the pump on / off. It also gives this ground to the Arduino to allow it to output the discrete / audio in the ON mode. If the Arduino fails, smoke can still be had with the ON switch mechanically.

If you want to bore yourself to death - here you go:
https://tasrv14.blogspot.com/2023/10/smoke-system-electronics.html
 
Hi Nick,

I did almost exactly this for my smoke system. I have a toggle switch to arm the smoke system. If I depress the engage momentary switch twice in one second, it engages the smoke system, along with an audio feedback of a beep every 1 or 2 seconds. If I depress the engage switch a single time, it stops the smoke followed by two quick beeps.

I bought a $16 generic controller off of Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015MRQNXS

I reprogrammed the PIC microcontroller and added a a potentiometer to control the volume level with breaking a trace and adding two wires.
DSCN7135.JPG


DSCN7137.JPG


If you're interested in one, email me at mike at rvplane dot com and I will toss something together for you. If you need any of the engagement/beeping behavior changed, that's easy enough with a few lines of code.

It's been running flawlessly in my RV for over 3 years.
 
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