Well, I fired up my Jarduino for the first time with everything hooked up. All the new cables, temp sensor for water and heatsink fans, etc. So far it looks like all the LED circuits are working as planned, the temp sensors are working, but I can't get the heatsink fans to run. Hmmm, no idea why. According to the drawing I have for the fan circuit, it says to use PWM pin 45 on the Arduino and pin 48 for the fan enable, but I went through the sketch and I think it's actually PWM pin 44 and 47 for the enable. So I used those but nothing...
Temp is holding steady at 27.5 C. I turned down the temp value so the fan should have come on at 20C. If there's a PWM signal from the arduino, where and what would I measure in the circuit?

Well as the other colours are coming on the heatsink temp has climbed to 34.5C. Gonna turn this off until I can get 'er figured out

Want to help, but I don't have a copy of it.

Sorry, page 17 post 162 of this thread.

Ya, but you have to look into the sketch to make sure it's assign to that pin.

Oh, that, lol, ya I did. I have a feeling it's not a sketch related problem.
The lines I found in the sketch that I think do what I'm wanting are:
const int HoodFansPWM = 44; //PWM Hood Heatsink Fan (code added so frequency = 25kHz)
const int HoodFansTranzPin = 47; //Hood Heatsink Fan on/off

This would leave me believe the arduino pins would be 44 and 47, not 45 and 48 as per the diagram previously referred to.

I have a feeling it's a wiring issue. That's why I was hoping to figure out if I should be able to read certain V's at specific places to be able to troubleshoot the circuit.

Woohoo, got the fans working!

get some potting compound (clear) and fill in the holl around your heat sensor


Steve

Cool, thanks for the suggestion.
I've fired everything up and leaving it go for the day. I tried adjusting the fan on temps and the fans shut off even though the heatsink was warmer than the set temp. Turned the set temp back down and they come on again. They also seem to be going fairly slow.. not sure if there's a setting in the sketch that can speed them up or what?

Hmmm, unplugged the PWM fan wire and the fans ramped up to where I think they should be. Anyone hazard a guess what might be wrong? Where I should start looking?

I'd start by poking around with your multimeter. Check the PWM pin to see what the output is and make sure you haven't accidentally reversed the ground and PWM wires, then start checking each part of your fan circuit. If I remember that crazy-assed circuit correctly, there is a chance the transistors aren't saturated and thus aren't acting like switches as they were intended to.

Also, check the programming to see what the minimum and maximum PWM outputs are. Most fans will struggle to operate properly once the PWM drops below a certain duty%.

Finally, make sure your controller and fan circuit are sharing the same ground (not just plugged into the same circuit but literally have their ground planes connected). If they aren't I can almost guarantee that's the problem.

Everything looks like it checks out. But it turns out the BC549C can't power up multiple fans so the 2N3904 that is on that schematic Chris shared earlier. There's a thread on ukreefs about it but not sure if I can link it here...

Can you repost the schematic and the link to that thread so I can take a look?

Sure
Schematic:
http://i1177.photobucket.com/albums/...ps8d293992.jpg


Link: You may have to go back 2 pages I think to where the guy brings up his problem and works through it.

http://ukreefs.com/index.php?topic=605.135


Thanks Chris for the help! Even though I kept you up 'till all hours of the morning on the east coast :D

Hmmm, looking like I have a wee bit of bleed voltage on my OCW string. On one heatsink, one of the OCW all 3 LED's are faintly lit and on the next in the series 2/3 LED's are lit.
http://i1177.photobucket.com/albums/...ps25d59256.jpg


Wheeeee, isn't DIY fun! :frusty:

Due to work and a project my wife asked me to do I've not been able to do anything on this project. I've ordered different transistors for the fan circuit and it's on it's way from China...

Pinhead: I tried returning your PM but your box is full.

Well, got all my proper parts from China for the Fan pwm control to build it exactly as per drawing above, and the PWM speed control still doesn't work... argh.

Gonna resurrect this. It's going to be the only thing holding me back from my tank upgrade soon. I built another circuit board to exactly match the one in post #214 last night. Plugged 'er all in this morning with one heatsink and it's doing to the same thing. Heatsink temp is at 38.6C and the fan hasn't ramped up. It's still running at the same speed it had started at. Maybe something in the sketch...

Lol, ok, I'm an idiot. I was wracking my brain thinking of anything that could be the problem. The fan still hasn't been ramping up and down via the PWM signal according to the temp sensor on the heatsink. I have a DS18B20 sensor that looks like a BC549 transistor, sunk into my heatsink with thermal compound and that's controlling my fans. I also have another one that is attached to a cable and sealed in an encased water proof housing like in your manual.
So I wondered if it was working properly. As soon as I grabbed it and watched the temp on the monitor go up, I realized the fan was speeding up :D
Duh, I must have either screwed up the pin assignments or something. It's been a long while since I set this all up, so I have to go back and read in the manual what's making all this work.
But at least I've got an idea what's wrong now! LOL
I haven't fixed it yet, but I'm still relieved.

Dude... no idea what you just said, might as well be speaking Swahilli... does it go beep beep like R2-D2? Lol.

Honestly though, I'm glad you figured it out. Are you going to be using this on your new build?

Haha, that's how I felt when I first embarked on this little adventure.

Ya, that's the plan. 3 - 18" full spectrum fixtures,

WOOHOO!!! Got it fixed. Now everything that I have hooked up is working as it should... only thing is that's 1 out of 3, lol
Hopefully it's just a matter of repeating what got done right on the first :D

Well, started cleaning things up a bit now that most everything is figured out. But now that I unhooked a couple things, I can't remember how they go back together. :frusty:

Here's where I'm at now. I took the HLG drivers out of the box. I was originally going to put it all in the left upper cabinet of the tank stand, but that put it in the same compartment as the overflow. I eventually thought that would give me moisture issues with the electronics so I mounted everything to a piece of plywood which will sit in the roof of the cabinet. I'm still looking to extend the TFT screen and mount it somewhere where I can reach it, but honestly, even if it just sits up top, not visible, it's not that big a deal. It's not very often I'll be changing anything with it regularly anyway.

This is what it looks like now:

http://i1177.photobucket.com/albums/...psykymydhq.jpg

http://i1177.photobucket.com/albums/...psmipzeqmg.jpg

Now I just need to remember how the heck to hook up the HLG drivers.
I've got the LED's in series hooked up to the V- and V+. But the Dim- and Dim+ are the wires that have me stumped. I think the Dim+ goes to the PWM pin on the Arduino... And the Dim- to the ground plane of the Arduino..????
I think I may be losing my brain cells...

Anyone???

Yup, Dim+ to the PWM signal and Dim- to ground :)

Cool, thanks! I've run into another potential problem, lol. I guess the HLG drivers need a 10V pwm signal but he Arduino only delivers 5V.
So now I need to see if the drivers will work at all (just at 50%) or how to convert the signal... :frusty:

I did something similar with an Arduino years ago. IIRC you need a PNP transistor or a MOSFET and a 10V power supply. The 5V PWM switches the 10V via the transistor.

So I ended up buying a converter from Coralux. We'll see if that works.
I've got everything hooked up and fired it up today. First time I did that with all 3 fixtures. I have run into a couple problems:
1) The TV string doesn't work at all :frusty:
2) I have some voltage bleed on one fixture so 2 of the 3 OCW stars are always on dimly
3) The XML NW string comes on but it's not anywhere as bright as it should be - no doubt because of the 5V PWM signal instead of the necessary 10V PWM
4) The XML CW string runs backwards - turn it up, it dims - turn it down, it gets brighter - so it never shuts off - I have no idea :frusty: :noidea:

BUT, on the positive side, the cooling fans work flawlessly - something that's been wrong for a while but now seems fixed.

Here's a shot before I fired it up - I figured if it blew up and burned to the ground, at least I'd have proof of what I built, lol

http://i1177.photobucket.com/albums/...pspo0c3ykr.jpg

And lo and behold, it actually working :party:

http://i1177.photobucket.com/albums/...psyuxqlrwa.jpg

I got my converter in from Coralux and I think I have it all figured out how to wire it. But I'm now looking for some of these:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/100pcs-2-6-1...3D191107646877

Anyone know where I can get some locally (Island or mainland)?

Well, dog gone it, I wasn't able to do things how I wanted. Turns out these HLG drivers cannot dim to zero, and if I wanted to use them I'd have to relay the power to the driver to turn them off. Needless to say I'm a bit disappointed, but I have only myself to blame for either not remembering that, or not doing enough research on them in the first place. The dimmest they get is almost 50%
If I knew a bit more about arduino programming language I think I could do it, but I'm not there. I have an extra Arduino Mega board, I'll probably keep the drivers and play with it over the next year or two and see if I can get it working, but for now I scrapped the idea, removed them from the system and built another LDD board for the XML LED's. They're going to be severely underpowered but I still think I'm going to have a lot of light. A total of 156 Cree and Exotic LED's.

Everything works fine now, but I am going to tweek some of the proto boards over the summer and swap them in for what there's now, so no real down time for the lighting.

Hopefully get some pics up of the finished product here in the next few days.

Try Lee's Electronics on Main St. Great little store for all sorts. Cheap too.

Hey Dom, do you need those specifically or just some 12 pin connectors? I can take a look in my own stock of stuff and also look at Lee's next time I'm there (probably some time mid-week?) and I can send them over to you.

How many are you needing?

Only 50%? That weird. They should go down to minimum 10%, and probably even as low as 1% if wired properly. Might be limited by the Arduino code? If you email a copy of the Arduino sketch and I take a quick read through and see if the problem is in there.

Hey Steve! Long time no see :)
Ya, it was weird. I got so frustrated, I ended up yanking the HLG drivers out and went with LDD's for now. I still want to get it figured out, but with water in the tank I wanted to get some lights up.

Pm me your e-mail and I'll send you the sketch or put it on dropbox or something.
So because I ended up not using the drivers, I didn't need the PWM converter, and thus no longer need the connectors, lol.