Meanwell LDD driver: for those who want to dim to 0 using Arduino

[nightOwl]

pwreef - Thanks. I was super nervous when I plugged it in the first time.

If I am using a wall wart to power my UNO do I spice the negative wire? Or should I power my UNO from the step down convertor. I would then need to make sure the - wire from the convertor is spliced with the ground from UNO and the Shared V In- ? I guess each 12V item would need its own convertor.

I saw the SCW you mentioned and in fact ordered those boards first by mistake. I was all excited until I opened them up. Then I saw how much one SCW costs and decided to use the convertors that were a fraction of the cost. I burned one out already by accidentally touching the + and - wire together the little led on it does not light up any more.

Thanks in advance

Most common mistake. Remove "Gound to Green on ballast". The power supply (not ballast in our case) ground green wire is AC side ground and should be grounded to your house AC electrical system via a proper 3-prong plug. Never connect any AC side wires to DC side of the fixture or you will get electrocuted. Arduino "Ground" is really DC (-). As such your Arduino DC (-) or what they call GRND on that board needs to be connected to DC (-) of your Arduino power supply and your LED power supply ( you call ballast) negative output wire. Making all DC "ground" side connections common. This rule however does not apply to LED string side. Never connect those (-) or (+) wires from different strings together. Hope this makes complete sense. Good luck!

 

[nightOwl]

pwreef - Well the changes you suggested are working...Thanks again! It's off when the UNO is unplugged and sending zero cuts the lights out. Now I can continue playing around with them.

 

[zachts]

Lucky nothing fried :eek2:

 

[pwreef]

Meanwell LDD driver: for those who want to dim to 0 using Arduino

I would warn you to stay away from cheap Chinese coverters. I lost very large SPS colonies because $3 converter fried when I was on vacation. I chose to just simply power Arduino using regular wall brick now to avoid such disaster in the future.

 

[zachts]

$12 SCWs on good old Fleabay......

 

[nightOwl]

zachts - I am glad nothing fried...especially not me. I had an incident as a kid and I am always a little hesitant of plugging something I made into a socket. Long story short I once tried to make my own rechargeable battery contraption. At the time rechargeable batteries were super expensive. I cut the cord from a old appliance and taped it bottom of a D battery. I was so proud until I plugged it into the outlet. Shorted the fuse in the house and I flew across the room. To this day the outlet in my room at my parents house still has two dark streak marks on it. My dad said it would be a good reminder not to do that again...lol.

Lucky nothing fried :eek2:

pwreef - I was thinking about getting a 12v fuse to go between the power from the stepdown to the UNO. If the fuse blows the UNO would get no power and cut everything off. Do you think this will alleviate the problem you had? Currently I am monitoring the voltage with a digital voltmeter. Also this little project is just for me to learn how to program and get familiar with the platform. I am just adding all kinds of features to see what it can do . I plan to eventually make one for my tank but this is for my scrubber. At this point it doesn't really matter ....my tank crashed a few weeks ago and pretty much everything died except my fish so I have plenty of time to learn this stuff...lol.

I would warn you to stay away from cheap Chinese coverters. I lost very large SPS colonies because $3 converter fried when I was on vacation. I chose to just simply power Arduino using regular wall brick now to avoid such disaster in the future.

zachts - I may keep that in mind when I do my real project. They seemed a little steep to me. I think with shipping it came out to about $16 or something right. So far all of my parts have come from there...lol. I guess when I create the real light (just to replace my actinics) I may consider those.

$12 SCWs on good old Fleabay......

Thanks again to all the people in this thread that have shared the knowledge unselfishly. It really has made this run to learn something new.

 

[perkint]

Hi guys,

O2Surplus (or anyone else who can answer) if using the 5up boards with on board arduino, what do I do with the PWM pins if I'm using a PCA9685 for PWM rather than the onboard? High, low or floating?

Thanks for any help

Tim

 

[O2Surplus]

Hi guys,

O2Surplus (or anyone else who can answer) if using the 5up boards with on board arduino, what do I do with the PWM pins if I'm using a PCA9685 for PWM rather than the onboard? High, low or floating?

Thanks for any help

Tim

Tim-

Set all five PWM pins as outputs but leave them floating. :twitch:

 

[perkint]

Thanks

Finally got the master board talking to the slave OK using two of your boards. Just need to tidy it up, pass back a temp (for heat sink) from slave to master and then it's good to go. Bit concerned about the suggestion in the feruino thread that some RTC libraries have issues with using multiple arduinos as master/slave on I2C, but will test that as well once I've read a bit more.

Tim

 

[nightOwl]

Anyone have two of the 10V Analog to 5V PWM Convertor available please let me know?

 

[nightOwl]

Does anyone know a place to order these from besides the linked place. They are a little steep for my blood. I have ordered the wrong ones twice now. I ordered the ones for O2Surplus boards by accident.

Okay....

Looks like a 5x5 board fits 4 drivers well. If I really tried I could probably fit six, but it wouldn't be pretty. I wanted to start with this and I can make variations of this one fairly easy.

Manufacturer part numbers for Phoenix connectors:

2 pos - 1751248 (linky)
4 pos - 1751264 (linky)
8 pos - 1751303 (linky)

 

[proietti]

[QUOTEDoes anyone know a place to order these from besides the linked place. They are a little steep for my blood. I have ordered the wrong ones twice now. I ordered the ones for O2Surplus boards by accident.
][/QUOTE]

I have tried to find these elsewhere as well but to no avail. Only Mouser stocks them

 

[nightOwl]

proietti - Thanks that's what I thought .

[QUOTEDoes anyone know a place to order these from besides the linked place. They are a little steep for my blood. I have ordered the wrong ones twice now. I ordered the ones for O2Surplus boards by accident.
]

I have tried to find these elsewhere as well but to no avail. Only Mouser stocks them[/QUOTE]

 

[jedimasterben]

Anyone using O2's 4up LDD/SCW board with the PWM fan control? I'm finishing my build and am trying to test my fans with the 12v output of the SCW, but none of them are turning on. Busted out the multimeter and I'm not getting any voltage output from pins 1 & 2 of the fan outputs. Also tested all four pins, none of them have any output that I could measure. The little status LED on the board next to the SCW is on, thought I'd mention that, oh, and I'm sure I didn't let the smoke out of anything.

 

[O2Surplus]

Anyone using O2's 4up LDD/SCW board with the PWM fan control? I'm finishing my build and am trying to test my fans with the 12v output of the SCW, but none of them are turning on. Busted out the multimeter and I'm not getting any voltage output from pins 1 & 2 of the fan outputs. Also tested all four pins, none of them have any output that I could measure. The little status LED on the board next to the SCW is on, thought I'd mention that, oh, and I'm sure I didn't let the smoke out of anything.

Ben- Connect a 5V High or PWM signal to the "Enable" pin to activate the fans.

Here's a diagram of the fan control circuit-

 

[O2Surplus]

Anyone have two of the 10V Analog to 5V PWM Convertor available please let me know?

I working on a batch of them right now, but it's been slow going as my day job has been keeping me very busy lately. I've completed 5 so far and hope to have another 10 finished by the end of this coming weekend.

Does anyone know a place to order these from besides the linked place. They are a little steep for my blood. I have ordered the wrong ones twice now. I ordered the ones for O2Surplus boards by accident.

Look for the screw headers on Fleabay. They're available for cheap if you know what to search for. I just bought 400 for $62 LOL. Use these terms for your search- "2 pin 3.5mm PCB Universal Screw Terminal Block".

 

[nightOwl]

O2Surplus - Thanks please put me down for one. Are the 2 pin 3.5 for the boards you created or for rrasco I just want to make sure. I will order some tonight .

I working on a batch of them right now, but it's been slow going as my day job has been keeping me very busy lately. I've completed 5 so far and hope to have another 10 finished by the end of this coming weekend.




Look for the screw headers on Fleabay. They're available for cheap if you know what to search for. I just bought 400 for $62 LOL. Use these terms for your search- "2 pin 3.5mm PCB Universal Screw Terminal Block".

 

[O2Surplus]

O2Surplus - Thanks please put me down for one. Are the 2 pin 3.5 for the boards you created or for rrasco I just want to make sure. I will order some tonight .

What board are you using? IIRC Rrasco used 3.5mm spaced screw headers on his designs. I've posted so many different designs that I'm no longer sure which design used what? Some of my PcB's used 3.5mm spacing, whereas others used 3.8mm. Let me know what design you've got and I'll do my best to steer you in the right direction- LOL.

 

[nightOwl]

O2Surplus - I have RRasco 4LDD Breakout v3.0. I ordered your 4UP SWD by mistake the fist time. My initial purchase of 3.81mm seemed to work just fine with those. My second order was the RRasco boards so I will order the 3.5 mm today. Thanks for all your help again. You guys are the best!

What board are you using? IIRC Rrasco used 3.5mm spaced screw headers on his designs. I've posted so many different designs that I'm no longer sure which design used what? Some of my PcB's used 3.5mm spacing, whereas others used 3.8mm. Let me know what design you've got and I'll do my best to steer you in the right direction- LOL.

 

[jedimasterben]

Ben- Connect a 5V High or PWM signal to the "Enable" pin to activate the fans.

Here's a diagram of the fan control circuit-

This is from a PM from O2:

Long story short - apply a 5V "high" or PWM signal to the middle "Enable" pin at the 3 pin fan control header to activate the fan. The +12V on pin #2 is always "hot", but pin #1 is only connected to ground if it's control transistor is energized. I'll post a picture of the fan control circuit to the LDD thread, so you'll be able to see how it works for yourself.

Ok, so that does add a layer of complexity to the array. Wasn't planning on using PWM control (I am using 5/6 of my PWM channels of the Bluefish controller for my main array and plan on using the last for my fuge) and there is no way as of right now to force a full PWM signal through one pin. As long as there is 12v always hot, I should be able to just run a wire from the fan ground to the 48v DC ground, right?