Question about wiring Steve's LEDs Drivers

[ReefPony]

I ordered my lighting from Steve's LEDs and ended up going with his drivers since I bought a kit.

I'm using an Arduino controller and have been looking over the manual for the Double driver and want to be clear on something before I try to wire everything up.

Obviously, I know I'm going to run a wire from one of my PWM pins to the PWM pin on the driver.

The driver boards also have a pin for +5VDC and 3 for ground. Obviously, one of the grounds is for the power supply. The manual says that the +5VDC pin is to power the controller board so it doesn't seem that I would need that. However, I'm a bit stuck on whether I need to run a ground wire from my breadboard to the driver board or if I just need the PWM wire.

 

[moncapitane]

I run my ground from the driver to the ground on the PSU and it works right. Just remember to short the two dimmer pins since you are going to be using pwm. I had that problem

 

[saf1]

I use a reef angel controller and have the +PWM pin 2 on the driver. The -PWM goes to the Comm or V- on the power supply. I am using the power supply he sells.

You won't be using port 4. Shoot him a email if you need something more direct or if you are unsure. They usually respond rather quickly or have for me in the past.

 

[ReefPony]

I run my ground from the driver to the ground on the PSU and it works right. Just remember to short the two dimmer pins since you are going to be using pwm. I had that problem

I already knew that one so it didn't catch me off guard. Ended up just wiring it up going by gut instinct (I did spend the better part of 3 years as a computer engineering major... I should know this stuff... but I've forgotten it all), stood back, and it didn't explode. Didn't work, either. Turned out there was something wrong with one of my PWM pins so I de-soldered the line from pin 8, attached it to pin 10, and changed my code and... voila... I'm watching my controller go through the final phase of dimming my lights down for me as I type.

Next step is to buy a new breadboard so that I can split off my control and ground lines to my second set of LEDs to the full array of LEDs I paid too much money for... oh, and to build some sort of enclosure since my redneck light stand (2 wire spools holding it about two inches off my glass top) doesn't exactly look good.

 

[moncapitane]

What code are you using? I'm working on 4 channels with a clock and a temperature output to a LCD screen.

 

[ReefPony]

I use a reef angel controller and have the +PWM pin 2 on the driver. The -PWM goes to the Comm or V- on the power supply. I am using the power supply he sells.

You won't be using port 4. Shoot him a email if you need something more direct or if you are unsure. They usually respond rather quickly or have for me in the past.

I'm using Jarduino 1.1 as my starting point although I have a feeling I'm going to end up stripping it down entirely and starting over.

Installation ended up being pretty simple once I diagnosed a problem on my Arduino board (dang, I have one less PWM pin to use... whatever will I do?). Just had some jitters since this was the first time I've worked with PWM control.

 

[saf1]

I'm using Jarduino 1.1 as my starting point although I have a feeling I'm going to end up stripping it down entirely and starting over.

Installation ended up being pretty simple once I diagnosed a problem on my Arduino board (dang, I have one less PWM pin to use... whatever will I do?). Just had some jitters since this was the first time I've worked with PWM control.

Sounds good. The drivers he sells are really solid and dim down to 0. I really like them. I had a flicker for a bit I noticed when the PWM signal was adjusting. It ended up being the relay port on the power box I use. Once I moved it everything is perfect.

 

[moncapitane]

Question about wiring Steve's LEDs Drivers

I'm using Jarduino 1.1 as my starting point although I have a feeling I'm going to end up stripping it down entirely and starting over.

Installation ended up being pretty simple once I diagnosed a problem on my Arduino board (dang, I have one less PWM pin to use... whatever will I do?). Just had some jitters since this was the first time I've worked with PWM control.

What arduino are you using? I'm on a mega so I have like 16 PWM pins. You are probably on an uno or something like that.

 

[ReefPony]

What arduino are you using? I'm on a mega so I have like 16 PWM pins. You are probably on an uno or something like that.

It's a Mega. For whatever reason, the PWM pin I had chosen for my blue lights wasn't working so I just moved it to a different pin. I'll probably never, at least with this aquarium, have a need for all the PWM pins this board provides so I saw no point in really trying to troubleshoot the pin itself.