Ground or Not

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oakbarn
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Ground or Not

Post by oakbarn »

I am running shielded Cat 5e twisted pair between the BCS 462 and some of the panel mounts M12 connectors for the M12 Patch cables for all my temperature probes. Each pair is in its own shield.

I have plenty of cable.

The length I am running from the BCS to the M12 Panel mount is about 14 foot mounted in an auxiliary panel.

I am also running a 14 foot 14 ga romex with ground to my auxiliary panel to power my 12 vdc power supply (same power source as the BCS). The 12 vdc will power my PID Display Modules (7 digit ext displays).

I plan to have a ground bar in the auxiliary panel that is the same as the BCS ground.

As I said, I have run 3 sets of Cat5e with 4 pair each, 4 sets of shielded 16 ga speaker wire (4 wire but not twisted), plus the 14-2 with ground romex (to supply power to a 12 vdc power supply to run my PID Display Modules (7 digit ext displays).

That gives me:
Cat5e 3 x 8 x 2 = 48 Cat5e wires
SW 5 x 4 x 4 = 80 x 16 ga Speaker wires

I tested the PID Display Modules with both the 16 ga speaker wire and the Cat5e (even tied those two together for 28 foot run) and either works well.

My auxiliary box will include 8 relays (6 x 115vac type and 2 x 24 vdc type) I have heat sinks on the relays. I only plan to use propane and pumps and two freezers for the relays so they may not even need the heat sinks but they look cool. It will also have a 12 vdc and 24 vdc AC to DC power supplies. I plan to add electromechanical valves in the future.

I also plan to use the speaker wire (16 ga) for any of the Outs.

Should I use the "white" of the twisted pair as a ground?
That would leave me with 1 Cat5e cable for other uses.

Since I have the wire, should I also Ground the Outs with a 16 ga speaker wire from the BCS or is the ground bar in the auxiliary box good enough?


I ran so many wires because I may also get another BCS to run the fermentation only.
JonW
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Re: Ground or Not

Post by JonW »

Ground the sub-panel to earth-ground (from your romex) and also use a cat-5 to bond the ground between the LED power supply and the BCS. Also ground the BCS to the earth ground.

I hope you're not bundling and running the romex and cat-5's all together.
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oakbarn
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Re: Ground or Not

Post by oakbarn »

No I am not bundling the Romex with the Cat5 or the speaker wires.
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