Would love some comments on this. I bought a battery powered Yale Conexis L1. Frustrated by the prospect of continually changing batteries (I don’t live in the flat and only visit a few times a year, the rest of the time it is let out as a holiday let), I set out to make it mains powered.
I am a complete noob and remember very little from my physics classes when I was 14…
The lock is powered by 4 x AA batteries, so I used an AA battery charger. The one I used powers batteries in pairs (I could only find a charger that charges individually or in pairs). I wanted the batteries to remain in the lock so in case of mulfunction they were easily in reach and easy to change.
I wired it up so each of the two sides of the charger (one side per pair of batteries) was wired in parallel with a pair of batteries, as in the diagram below which I found online (ignore the 12v).
I wired the charger up to a Fibaro relay, which turns it on for an hour a night (but I could probably reduce this to a couple of hours a week or less).
It seems to be working fine. Can anyone with better knowledge than me suggest a better way of making a battery powered lock run on mains power, with battery back-up? Or is there something I have missed which makes what I have created not nearly as I good as I think it is? I honestly have pretty limited knowledge of this sort of thing.
Images of the setup below:
Charger sits boxed inside wall with cable running into the door.
Cable comes out inside the lock:
Attach cables to terminals for each pair of batteries in parallel:
Fit batteries: