Must-haves for EASY DIY controller?

[heathsanders]

Alright guys, I'm at a loss with the ethernet part of my Hydra. The board is fully populated, however I'm getting no connection lights on the ethernet port. About the only thing I've done as far as troubleshooting is to load up the blink sketch to the slave avr. Still nothing. Any tips to help hunt this problem down is greatly appreciated.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Which version of the board are you using? Can you verify polarity and location of all relevant parts? Can you verify correct voltage supply at the various parts?

 

[heathsanders]

Which version of the board are you using? Can you verify polarity and location of all relevant parts? Can you verify correct voltage supply at the various parts?

Board version is 1.0 11/11/10, all polarity specific components are oriented correctly. As far as measuring voltages, yes I can. I'm just not sure what to measure.

 

[DustinB]

Just out of curiosity, what ethernet jack are you using?

 

[heathsanders]

Just out of curiosity, what ethernet jack are you using?

Using HanRun HR911105A purchased from Itead.

Measuring voltages across R1, R2, R3, R6, R7, R8 and R9 I see 0 volts. I'm sure this is not right. I am inspecting the board for bad solder joints and bridges.

 

[terahz]

Start testing the various voltage regulators. Make sure you have 5V, -5V, 3.3V at the regulators. Then take it from there.

 

[heathsanders]

I think I have a bad 3.3v regulator. Measuring voltages @ U4 I get 5v coming in, but nothing coming out. The chip is very hot, too hot to touch for more than 5ooms.

 

[terahz]

That's your problem. The 3.3V regulator is for the ethernet circuit. But the problem came from somewhere else. If it is very hot, it probably means you have a short somewhere.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

+1, on a short somewhere.

Did you socket your various ICs? Sometimes it helps to pull them all out, creating a "dumb" board of just passive components and voltage regs, so you can test for proper voltages everywhere on the system.

Also, check to make sure your ICs are in the correct orientation!

 

[heathsanders]

+1, on a short somewhere.

Did you socket your various ICs? Sometimes it helps to pull them all out, creating a "dumb" board of just passive components and voltage regs, so you can test for proper voltages everywhere on the system.

Also, check to make sure your ICs are in the correct orientation!

I did socket all of the ICs, and that's a good idea to remove them for testing.
I did find a little too much solder on the 3.3 reg. which is now fixed and I'm getting only 1.5V out of it. Unfortunately now that that is fixed I'm getting 0V out of the 5V reg. I'm going to de-solder both regs and try again.
I plan on purchasing 2 new regs just to be sure I didn't fry them.

Thanks for the troubleshooting tips. :beer:

 

[DeathWish302]

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

Thanks Guys for the honest responses. Cost is not my sole driver, but realizing that a huge portion of any free time I currently have is a concern. The 'labor cost' is just a way for me to quantify is the end result worth the time investment. It works for me since I need numbers.

I wish I would have never asked the question, b/c you guys have unintentionally sparked my 'I told you so' inner voice that says you can do anything.... Maybe the $20 GE timer will work for now and the frankenstein controller will begin during this boring midwest winter... I really need to quite looking in the DIY forum.:headwally:

Guess you'll be seeing me more on this thread and I'm sure some 2am mornings are to come and no sleep until I figure out the bugs. This will be a strectch from the LED build for sure.

 

[Hamato]

To reduce complexity I would like to power the hydra and an eln-60-48p off of 1 10v PS.

Would this MOSFET work without any additional circuitry? Or is there a simpler/easier way. I'm only powering 1 meanwell atm.

Similar to this circuit with the aforementioned mosfet, a 10v PS and without the additional LM317.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Hamato, go to the Hydra project site and look in the source for the ELN Shield project. It's meant to be a shield for the Hydra or any other Arduino to get Meanwell compatibility for dimming. The shield uses a transistor to convert the PWM voltage to 10v.

 

[snuff]

Can not open the Hydra BOM for some reason. Can open all others just fine, anybody have the latest BOM for the Hydra?

 

[DustinB]

Are you getting it from this location? http://hydra-reef.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/hardware/hydra/bom.xlsx

Take note this is for Excel 2007 I believe. You can get the compatibility addon here for previous versions: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=3

 

[snuff]

Still cant view it. Even downloaded an excel viewer from microsoft. I can open all the other BOM's for this project, just not the Hydra one.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Shoot me a PM with your email address and I'll email a few different versions of it to you for you to try.

 

[snuff]

PM sent, Thank you!!

 

[TheShadow]

Loading main firmware works fine but when I try to load the slave I get

avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_disable(): protocol error, expect=0x14, resp=0x51

any ideas

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Do you have any communication with the slave at all? i.e. can you upload a blink sketch or do something else to verify that the circuit is physically correct?

Check component orientations, too.