Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and beginning April 20th, 2021 (Eastern Time) the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.
Trending News
Electrical ground vs. negative?
I am trying to use this rc switch to operate a circuit: http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/item/RC-13/s...
but it is not working. The black wires on each channel are labeled "ground" not "negative." When I hook them up to a motor, I am just hooking the ground up to what would usually be the negative pole of the motor. Is there a reason why this shouldn't be?
The power in also has a positive and a ground wire, I have again been connecting this ground to the negative.
Am I doing something wrong? Shouldn't the circuit work that way??
That's the problem, no matter what I hook up to the leads I get nothing. I am using 12V which is exactly what the remote requires, the motor runs fine off of the same 12V without the remote being involved.
4 Answers
- protohamLv 61 decade agoFavorite Answer
Just reading the description I would assume that each channel is actually a relay, (just a switch). So you would have to connect your battery to the relay to make it work.
Source(s): EE - 1 decade ago
Cannot quite make out all of the labeling in their "larger picture", but it looks like you should connect the green wire to battery negative side and red wire to +12 V. Then any one of the 4 channels looks like the switched +12 V is on the white wire and the black wire is the ground (motor negative terminal). They may have used either relays (which will click) or transistors (which are completely silent) to drive the 4 channels, but if it were me I'd try to listen very closely to see if the "contron" is faintly clicking when you activate the remote. Also, I'd put a voltmeter across any channel's black & white wires and expect 12 V when that channel is activated.
- poorcocoboiboiLv 61 decade ago
It should work; have you tried using a voltmeter to verify the controller is actually delivering power to the motor? Are you sure you have a DC motor?
The use of the term 'ground' for the negative battery terminal means they consider the negative terminal to be at zero volts for the circuit design. This is common and means that all voltages in the circuit are positive, so don't worry about that.
- nudnik0Lv 61 decade ago
Read the manual. Failing that, my guess would be that you should connect a 12V DC power supply across the red (positive) and green (negative) wires of the switch and then pick one of the four pairs of white and black wires and connect your load across the white (positive) and black (negative) wires of the pair. Good luck!
