Must-haves for EASY DIY controller?

Looking at that.......... wouldnt your LED channels be off of just 5,9,10, and 11 in the middle of the board instead of d5,d9,d10, and d11? Those are the slave/secondary AVR pins?
 
The arrows come out of "MAIN" which is the main AVR. 'D' stands for Digital. So my intent was that the above would read "Digital pin 5 from the main AVR goes to channel 1 Blue LEDs".

Technically the middle pins are also D0-D13. If you look under them you'll see the word "Digital"
 
Hey I told you I'm new to this whole electronic thing :D

Now if you would just upload those relay gerbers...................... :D


Thanks to all for their work on this project. Excited to get my boards in. Some parts arrived today.
 
shirley386 said:
I got the Chauvet SR-8 Relay Pack to use with the relay board mentioned here. It has zero info on pinout for the DB9 plug. Would it be safe to assume that a straight-thru cable from X1 on the board to the plug on the Relay Pack would work? I understand that a serial DB9 cable crosses a couple of wires.
Click to expand...

Anybody know?
 
I adjusted the pinout to the right connections for use with the chauvet relay pack when I made it. A standard DB9 serial cable will go from the relay board to the chauvet relay strip without issue.
 
why do you have so many led channels terahz dont you only need 2 daylight and actinic I am looking at doing a pwm driver I need to control 10 1w rebels white and 10 1w royal blues I may use a buckpuck since I am having a hard time really pinpointing a diy driver that I can use I looked at these http://cgi.ebay.com/1w-LED-Driver-M...893?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item336698ff0d 1 thing I am concerened about is can 1 pwm output control more then 1 driver or do I need a pwm output for each driver
 
Have you looked at the DIY driver thread (link through my signature). The Arduino PWM can drive multiple CAT4101. The version I did was about $3 to drive 6 LEDs.

Just curious why 1 watt LEDs?
 
because they are already in the tank that I bought it is using lm317 to power them now but I cant control them thats not the only thing I would change about the setup it has 5 cool whites 4 warm whites and 6 royal blues I plan on adding 6 more royal blues this is on an 8 gallon biocube I may drop out 2 of the warm whites or dimming them more then the others
 
from the hydra reef site I downloaded terahz firmware loaded it to my main avr (I had Dustins but he is not using pwm leds and I wasnt planning on it when I started using his) now my lcd displays random characters I looked at the wires and one came loose so I soldered it and still no go I tried switching the lcd and i2c chip with same result any ideas on what is going on I think wires could have got crossed when it came loose while it had power

edit nevermind now I just need to figure out why his firmware displays jiberish the hydra test displays fine. Are you now using 8 bit are you I dont have the extra 4 wires for 8 bit .
 
Last edited:
Help please.

Help please.

OK, I finally got it together. I loaded the hydra_test sketch and uploaded it. The LCD lit up but would not display anything. After further investigation I realized that I had the LCD cable reversed; pin 1 to pin 16, etc. I turned it around and it works now however you can hardly read it. It is plenty bright but there is little contrast between foreground and background. It will light up on BUB power but not display anything (that I can see) but on a 12V wal-wart I can barely read the display. The funny thing is that if I pull the cable off of the LCD header while it is on and then reconnect it, it displays random characters with perfect contrast. Am I overlooking something or could I have fried something when it was powered with the cable reversed?

Thanks
Shirley
 
I would not recommend unplugging and plugging while a system is powered. IMHO this is a bad idea. LCD have a contrast control. I don't recall if the Hydra has a potentiometer to adjust or if it uses one of the analog pins. I expect that is your problem.
 
I tried turning the variable resistor but it didn't do anything. I forgot to mention, I have another LCD display and it does the same thing.
 
shirley386 said:
The funny thing is that if I pull the cable off of the LCD header while it is on and then reconnect it, it displays random characters with perfect contrast.
Click to expand...

These displays have onboard controllers that accept information. They require that a set of start-up commands be received before they will accept display information properly. The startup commands are only sent when the board is powered up. This means when you unplug the display, it's controller resets, but never receives the startup information to display what data is being received.
 
I am following this thread quite long and I think you guys did fantastic job. Finally I have decided to build Hydra too, even I am not really skilled in soldering, I am an IT guy.

Does not anybody have one free spare Hydra PCB that he can send to Europe - Slovakia via normal air mail? I could pay via paypal.
 
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