A 40A 240V High-Load Relay Board for the Raspberry Pi is unveiled by Sequent Microsystems.

Hefty Board's designers say that it has enough switching power for "1,000 houses" when daisy-chained via RS485 for up to 1MW.

The Raspberry Pi and comparable single-board computers and programmable logic controllers (PLC) now have a high-power relay add-on from Sequent Microsystems that, according to the firm, has enough power to switch the electricity for "1,000 households" from a single Raspberry Pi.

According to Mihai Beffa of Sequent, switching extremely high power loads might be difficult. This is the issue that the company's most recent board design aims to address. "Specialized power relays, hefty contacts, and extremely broad PCB traces are needed for large current loads. All three problems are resolved by this card, which has the ability to switch three 40A/240VAC circuits."

3 High Load Relays for Raspberry: Switch Power to 1000 Homes

Each of the three heavy-duty relays on the board is capable of handling 40A at 240V. The cards may be daisy-chained together through an RS485 connection, and if you pick up 32 separate cards, that's a total of 921.6KW of switching capacity for the headline "1,000 homes" claim. Of course, those alone aren't sufficient to meet the demands of the claimed "1,000 houses,"

The board also has additional tactics under its sleeve: As an alternative to "a Star-Delta starter like [the] Schneider Electric LC3D32AF7, which you can buy for $2,244," Sequent has shown how three boards strung together can satisfy the soft-start needs of a three-phase 25KW motor.

Sequent is careful to emphasize the board's wider compatibility despite the Raspberry Pi being its primary target market: "We tested the card with a cheap, $35 Orange Pi and it worked wonderfully," Beffa explains. We also tested the card using our adapter with a ROCK Pi (direct plugin) and a BeagleBone. The board may also be utilized with a PLC that supports the MODBUS and RS485 protocols.

With tangible incentives beginning at $50 for the board, connectors, standoffs, and DIN rail brackets, the high-load relay board is now being funded on Kickstarter. This year's fulfilment is anticipated to start in November.