Must-haves for EASY DIY controller?

Is the avr on your other arduino socketed? You could use your other board to burn the blink sketch to a 328 then swap it onto the hydra to test.

When you say you are getting nothing on the lcd, do you literally mean nothing at all, or just not what you expected? Even if it is not getting meaningful data sent to it, it should light up when it has power. Maybe it is in backwards? Or your avr is backwards or the mcp I/O chip is backwards.
 
der_wille_zur_macht said:
Is the avr on your other arduino socketed? You could use your other board to burn the blink sketch to a 328 then swap it onto the hydra to test.

When you say you are getting nothing on the lcd, do you literally mean nothing at all, or just not what you expected? Even if it is not getting meaningful data sent to it, it should light up when it has power. Maybe it is in backwards? Or your avr is backwards or the mcp I/O chip is backwards.
Click to expand...

The other arduino is soldered. Good idea though. The blink sketch is already working on both AVRs.

I am getting absolutely nothing on the LCD. The LCD is the only thing that I ordered from ebay. It's possible that the pinout doesnt match the hydra's. I'll have to try to find a datasheet for it. Do I have to have more than +5 and GND plugged into the LCD to test it?

Could you post a fairly high res photo of a working hydra so I can verify my chip orientations? They look right according to the silkscreens, but who knows.

I think my next step may be to clean the board again, verify each and every solder joint and trace on the board again, clean and test.
 
Did you try flipping the FTDI plug 180 degrees? Make sure the pinout matches the labeled pinout on the hydra. The LCD backlight should light up when hooking up +5v and gnd yes. Do you have a link to the ebay item?

Ignore U11 and the small surface mount parts, you likely have a more current version of the board.

LatestTop.jpg
 
I just ordered 10 Hydra boards and will have 8 left over. If anyone is interested in one shoot me a pm and I can get one to you when they come in.
 
So far all 8 spare boards are spoken for. If anything changes in the next couple of weeks while I wait for the boards to come in I will post an update. I also got shipment confirmation from Digikey(where most of the parts were ordered) and await confirmation from Mouser. As of last night Mouser was $20+ bucks more expensive than Digikey, however Digikey didn't have everything needed for this build (minus ATMegas, Hanrun and LCD), so I did have to order some parts from Mouser.

I can't wait to get everything in and fire up the soldering iron. I currently have only my LEDs running off a Mega 2560. Looking forward to integrating that and a whole lot more onto one board.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the making and debugging of the Hydra and related boards. My hats off to you!
 
Heads up

Heads up

For all of you using the Chauvet SR-8 relay pack; read this. I have built three Hydras over the past several months and I love the way the relay pack works with them. I installed the last one today and spent a couple of hours trying to figure out why things that should be on were off and vise-verse. I was sure it was in the sketch but that looked right. I finally realized that the last relay pack I bought has the ports numbered exactly opposite from the first two. The actual wiring is the same but they are labeled starting from the opposite end. 1 is where 8 should be. I just moved the plug-ins and it works like a champ.
 
Here's what I use:

Code: 
 getDate(&second, &minute, &hour, &dayOfWeek, &dayOfMonth, &month, &year);
   
  // change to am/pm format
  Hour = hour;
  if (Hour > 11)
  {
    DisplayHour = Hour - 12;
    ampm = 'p';
  }
  else
  {
    DisplayHour = Hour;
    ampm = 'a';
  }
  
  
  // 12 am (after midnight) will be 0 hour - change the display to 12
  if (DisplayHour == 0)
  {
    DisplayHour = 12;
  }

  if (DisplayHour <10)
  {
    sprintf(buffer, "%01d:%02d:%02d%c%c%c", DisplayHour, minute, second, ampm, 'm', ' ');  // one decimal place on hour
  }
  else
  {
    sprintf(buffer, "%02d:%02d:%02d%c%c%c", DisplayHour, minute, second, ampm, 'm', ' ');  // two decimal places on hour
  }
  
  lcd.cursorTo(3,0);
  lcd.print(buffer);
 
I must say guys, I read all the portions of this thread over 2 days, and am very impressed. I would love to be able to help, but am a new electronic hobbyist.
I will be making an order hopefully next week for board, and parts. Is the most current BOM and gerbers up? Seems like not much has changed hardware wise.

Well again thanks for doing this for the reef community.
Marc
 
Using TeraHz's sketch, how do I get the Hydra to go into IR learning mode? I see that it has that mode in the sketch but I don't know how to invoke it. Any help is appreciated.
 
Anyone in New York City wants to try this build and wish to share the shipping and experience? If so, please contact me.

I am expecting to start ordering in 2 weeks after I read thru the threads.
 
heathsanders said:
Using TeraHz's sketch, how do I get the Hydra to go into IR learning mode? I see that it has that mode in the sketch but I don't know how to invoke it. Any help is appreciated.
Click to expand...
The fastest way will be to put this line in the setup function after init_components();

enter_setup_mode();

Upload the sketch, it will go through the IR learning process. Save. Then remove the line and reupload the sketch.

I was going to fix this to ask you if you want to do IR setup when you do a clock reset, and never did.
 
terahz said:
The fastest way will be to put this line in the setup function after init_components();

enter_setup_mode();

Upload the sketch, it will go through the IR learning process. Save. Then remove the line and reupload the sketch.

I was going to fix this to ask you if you want to do IR setup when you do a clock reset, and never did.
Click to expand...

Thank you kind sir!
 
Simple question: If you were to control lights (4-5 sockets), 1000-1300W of heaters (about two heaters, so 2 additional sockets) & a temp probe is this DIY even really worth the time cost over the Apex Jr or Apex Lite? I'm all for DIY (and almost all my equipment has had some form), but since I'm the mechanical type and not too savvy on electronics it seems this may be more frustration and taxing than it's worth. I do remember robotics and a couple of the theory based electronics course in college and they were quite taxing for a ME!:headwalls:

The DIY price tag I have seen a couple times of $80-100 doesn't seem like it would perform what I'm asking since a DIY 8 socket outlet box I have seen quoted at $60 to build. That combined with the $80-100 just doesn't seem like a savings for the Apex price tag of $250-370. Especially when I want to consider my time free time is worth more than the average fast food joint starting rate. Not trying to downplay the effort, just asking for honest input from some of the more fluent sparkies. I understand most wouldn't design, build and tweak a skimmer they spent $300 to build that would have cost $700 complete. I would, so different strokes for different folks but I would like to know if this is even worth the read of the entire thread before I start. I'm interested, but not in a year long fruitless headache.

TIA!:beer:
 
Frank, ultimately it's up to you to decide what your criteria are for choosing one controller over another. Personally, I would DIY even if it was more expensive and complicated, for various reasons - the potential for cost savings is not a high priority for me.

That said, you have correctly determined that, if all you really need is basically a timer to turn a few things on and off, then yeah, doing this sort of DIY controller is probably not the most cost effective route. Basically, in terms of functionality, the Hydra is more on par with a high-end internet-capable controller that might cost you $600 - $800 off the shelf, it's not meant to compete with stripped budget controllers. Even comparing to similar controllers functionality-wise is not exactly apples to apples, as the Hydra is really a development platform for you to build your own controller, not a complete finished project.

And, no matter how complete the documentation, any from-scratch electronics project is going to entail a certain amount of experimentation, troubleshooting, and so on - so if that's not your thing, this is probably not the best route for you.
 
Hi Frank,

I will speak for myself here. The worth it part is the doing, not the cost, if that make sense. If you factor the time that you need to spend to learn and build something like the Hydra, it is almost impossible to find cost savings. With most of DIY that is the case, as far as I can tell. Nothing like saying: "I built that!".

Now, to answer more directly your question, Apex Lite is $370, a Hydra with 8 socket outlet will be less than $170, so we're looking at $200 difference. Only you can decide if that is worth it for you or not.

On the other hand, the Hydra, in addition to what the Apex Lite can do, can be expanded with many temp probes, can dim led drivers, can be hooked to ThingSpeak to produce graphs of the monitored parameters. And that's not even reaching the limit of the I/O capabilities of the Hydra. With additional circuits you can add Orp, more PH probes (calcium reactor?), add as many power outlets as you like.

Bottom line is: Do you enjoy building things enough to not care about the "savings"?

Good Luck :)
 
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