Meanwell LDD driver: for those who want to dim to 0 using Arduino
- Thread starter pwreef
- Start date
Reef Mortician
New member
Excellent thread!
I'm planning similar circuit board for my led project.
It's going to be a 30in Makersled heatsink using 2 or 3 Lumia 5.2 pucks. I will run the lights off a bluefish mini controller, a 6up board with Mean Well LDD drives, and a 350w power supply.
Now my question. Can I trick the blue fish mini into running 3 fans at variable speeds? As if the fans were another light.
I want the fans to ramp up/down with the lights, and shut off as well. I know I will need to match currents on the fans to the Mean Well LDD drivers. Do I need to meet a threshold on pwm fans?
Thanks in advance.
I'm planning similar circuit board for my led project.
It's going to be a 30in Makersled heatsink using 2 or 3 Lumia 5.2 pucks. I will run the lights off a bluefish mini controller, a 6up board with Mean Well LDD drives, and a 350w power supply.
Now my question. Can I trick the blue fish mini into running 3 fans at variable speeds? As if the fans were another light.
I want the fans to ramp up/down with the lights, and shut off as well. I know I will need to match currents on the fans to the Mean Well LDD drivers. Do I need to meet a threshold on pwm fans?
Thanks in advance.
jedimasterben
LED world domination!
Take a look at O2surplus' new boards. They use any of the BF mini's channels fed into an Arduino, which converts to 25kHz, and pulses the output of the 12v fan connectors. It can run as many fans as you have power for. The boards have two slots for SCW, so in theory you can have up to 24 watts of fan power (since the biggest SCW is 12 watts).
I have my fans piggybacked on the violet channel, as those are the only LEDs I have that I peak at 100%, so it looks like this:
(well, I was going to put a copy of my light graph here, but I forgot my internet at home has been out since Thursday morning, so I can't reach the controller to grab it)
Reef Mortician
New member
I'm new at this and don't know lingo too much, so bear with me. I do have some electrical know how. How complicated is the Arduino to build/set up. I know its open source but that's about it.
jedimasterben
LED world domination!
The Arduino is part of the board, O2 preflashes them. All they do is take in the 3.3v 480Hz signal and output a 5v 25kHz signal, no connections or anything else needed.
Not the best photo of the boards, but I forgot to take more of them and they are now enclosed in a housing that takes significant work to remove, so I'm not going to get any better ones any time soon
Reef Mortician
New member
I found this link is this what your talking about?The Arduino is part of the board, O2 preflashes them. All they do is take in the 3.3v 480Hz signal and output a 5v 25kHz signal, no connections or anything else needed.
Not the best photo of the boards, but I forgot to take more of them and they are now enclosed in a housing that takes significant work to remove, so I'm not going to get any better ones any time soon
http://www.ferduino.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=184
jedimasterben
LED world domination!
No, these are plug and play. The Arduino on these boards is a static piece that is preconnected.
Kaiserman1967
New member
It is a 30 minute ramp up and down and actual sunrise/sunset. I'm East Coast USA. I'll have to look at what it is. (7:22am - 7:15pm) It was a huge jump in "on" time when I made the switch. When I say green, they are 510-530nm bulbs. IF that helps.
I had no idea I needed to go that slow. So coral really only need RB and warm white light???
have a read through this thread which i found to very helpfull in regards to what corals need. I actually dont have any whites at all, only RGB.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2315500
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2315500
jedimasterben
LED world domination!
You'll find out soon enough that that isn't the case.
Kaiserman1967
New member
How important are lens on your bulbs? They say they have a 105 degree spread, so I didn't think it was necessary. Thoughts?
jedimasterben
LED world domination!
I haven't run any lenses on my last several arrays. IMHO, they were necessary years ago when LEDs individually had much lower intensity, but nowadays, efficiency is way up and get plenty of power into the tank without them.
Lenses are still useful if you mount the LEDs way above and open top tank for example to contain light spill into the room. they are also still good if you make a long linear array where you wan't to focus all your blue light for example into the tank in order to run lower power for the same amount of light delivered to the coral. But you need to take care on using them as it is now very easy to create a hot spot using lenses that will nuke even the most light tolerant corals.
As Jedi said you need to check out the O2Surplus boards. BF mini mounts to the board. Fans plug into the board. LDD's plug into the board. SCW's plug into the board. Board is made to fit the slots on the Makerled heatsink. You can use all channels on the bf mini for lights and have fans tied to one of the channels for timing and rpm. Very nice!!
Reef Mortician
New member
Need to ask if there is one with six slots for drivers still. I think I'll add some moon lights too.
I'd like to have each puck dim independently from the other. Would that require 2 boards and 2 controllers. I'd like to have the lights set left to right as well across the fixture.
Now when Ben is mentioning O2surplus' boards, I thought I would share a little write up I did on what O2surplus made for me:
http://www.playsofrays.photos/
http://www.playsofrays.photos/
Reef Mortician
New member
Sweet write up, this is what I'm been looking for a write up that explains it in detail for noobs.
Pm O2Surplus and he'll fix you up. Search his name or look back through this thread.
Sumer's writeup is very good. Between advice from jedimasterben and Sumer's writeup I think I'll be able to do this. Complete noob here too.
