Issues with main voltage boards

Development Boards
#1

Hello Everyone,

I have been working on using riot with the Blitzwolf SHP2/6 power meters. (https://www.blitzwolf.com/3840W-EU-WIFI-Smart-Socket-p-244.html) These smart sockets contain an esp8266, a relay, and a power sensor.

I would like to contribute my board definitions and drivers to the RIOT repository. However, there is one issue I have. As these boards are directly connected to mains voltage, and when developing/programming also expose this to probing fingers, they might be dangerous to work with. Furthermore incorrectly connecting these boards to program them while connected to the mains voltage, might destroy USB-ports or more.

How then should I add these boards/drivers in a safe/responsible manner? Possible solutions that I have thought of are:

  • Just adding a warning to the documentation of the board.
  • Add a warning to the makefile with a line that needs to be removed to compile at all?
  • Ignoring the problem
  • Not adding this to RIOT

I would like your opinion on what I should do, better solutions are more than welcome.

Regards, Tim

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#2

How then should I add these boards/drivers in a safe/responsible manner?

    > Possible solutions that I have thought of are:     > - Just adding a warning to the documentation of the board.

Yes. Maybe a picture of what not to touch :slight_smile:

    > - Add a warning to the makefile with a line that needs to be removed to compile at all?     > - Ignoring the problem

It seems that unless you have this board, and actually connect it to the mains, that you can't hurt yourself by compiling the code.

#3

This was some time ago.
But I solved this by designing a optically isolated programmer, (which i only used one time)

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#4

I’d guess you can power the esp via the programmer and without connecting the circuit to mains. A large warning in the documentation should be sufficient.

#5

Yeah, that is sufficient for programming.
Debugging the main voltage sensor would be something you should only do when you know what you are doing.

I will keep it in mind.

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