Relay Switch

The Autonomous Bicycle Team has used relay switches for electrical training projects and to control the direction of the rear motor.

Explanation and Purpose

A switch is a device used to toggle if an electrical circuit is connected or disconnected. Compared to a mechanical switch, a relay switch uses a small outside electric current to control a switch for another circuit. Cornell Autonomous Bicycle has a blue module with four boxes on it, consisting of four relay switches. Each relay switch consists of three terminals: GND, VCC, and INX, where X is the relay switch number (from 1 to 4).

Use in Electrical Training Projects

The relay switch is great tool to provide practice using a breadboard and writing Arduino code. For this training project, a simple circuit is created using an Arduino, relay switch, and LED that would make the LED turn on when the relay was on and off when the relay was off. The