Who wants a cheap, simple, Arduino-based LED controller?

Reef2.5
Look in control panel under ports and see what port is your USB bub showing up after it is plugged in of course.
Same error as I had, and the fix for it was selecting proper com port ( in my case it was port 4) and selecting proper board ( in my case I chose Duelmilanove or Nano with ATmega328)
Worked like a charm afterwards
Exactly what Dwzm said
 
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How are people mounting their controllers? After looking at mine, the problem is that the buttons are so far below the surface of the screen that you can't really flush mount it in a project box or anything. Right now my solution is to unsolder the switches and power led, move them to the backside of the board, and run ribbon cable to the lcd. Wish I had thought of this before I assembled both of them...
 
FWIW, there are "caps" available for these buttons that allow them to be extended for through-hole mounting. As such you could panel-mount using these caps and a drill hole to allow you to see the power LED. Searching on Mouser should reveal some of these caps I'm talking about.

Another thought. The power LED is extremely redundant. If the device has power, the LCD will be on. The power LED is not "smart" in any way - it simply indicates that something around 5v is present on the 5v rail. You could leave it off and lose no benefit.
 
nick,

In order to use that shield, you'd basically have to start from scratch with the UI. It uses an MCP23008 port expander to talk to the LCD and the buttons, while my design assumes they are directly connected to I/O pins on the AVR.

It would be a fine way to build a controller, and the end result could look and feel just like the Typhon, but they would essentially be very different devices on the inside.
 
Does anyone have an extra eln shield PCB that i can buy. I would like a eln PCB and a typhon PCB.
Thanks,
Greg
 
neat project, but I have a coupel questions.

1) lets say we are controling 4 meanwells, (2 for white and 2 for blue)
when you set the on/off times and fade time does it do all 4 channels the same or can you split it up. for example I would like to fade my blues in over and hour then have my whites start fading in over an hour once the blues reach the set intensity, then opposit at night.

2) is the reason your building custom boards just to save some money over using a premade Arduino board?

I have a Arduino Duemilanove already and I was wondering if I could just make a simple version that plugs into my laptop where I set it and then turn it on. no display or buttons, just a graphical interface on the laptop to program my lighting times.

Steve
 
This board allows you to control 4 ports individually, so you can dim each blue if you wanted to.

The Arduino PWM is a 5V source, to the Meanwells 5V would only go to half power, part of the board switches the 5V to 10V so you can fully control the Meanwell. There is a another thread that discusses the power only so you can use the Duemilanove if you wanted to.
 
StirCrazy said:
2) is the reason your building custom boards just to save some money over using a premade Arduino board?
Click to expand...
Yes you can save a lot by going this route.

StirCrazy said:
I have a Arduino Duemilanove already and I was wondering if I could just make a simple version that plugs into my laptop where I set it and then turn it on. no display or buttons, just a graphical interface on the laptop to program my lighting times. Steve
Click to expand...
Like me, I went with the built in Arduino + LCD. Although Im not using the DWZM driver... I intend to use Arduino + transistor to control 0-10 volts signal form my Mean Well. You only need two PWM pins from your Duemilanove .
 
katchupoy said:
Yes you can save a lot by going this route.


Like me, I went with the built in Arduino + LCD. Although Im not using the DWZM driver... I intend to use Arduino + transistor to control 0-10 volts signal form my Mean Well. You only need two PWM pins from your Duemilanove .
Click to expand...

thanks for the replys, I didn't see a huge savings in the original set up, I paid 35 bucks for my board.

I just started playing with my Arduino, made the LED blink so far:lmao: but it seams not to dificult.. going to take some time to get used to the programing language as the last one I ever used was apple basic about 30 years ago :lol2:

ok thats another thing I was wondering about the amprage load on the PWM pins, and if they could handle two meanwells each, thanks.

Steve
 
I have a led system with 10 drivers and am building one of these can someone post some pics of how they wired it into their system that has multiple meanwell drivers
 
If you set the dimming to 100 and the ramp time to 0 could you use this to drive a solid state relay to operate something that needs a discreet on/off like a solenoid? If anyone has a board available I could use one, PM please. I seems the Chinese new year has most of the cheep board sources closed down for a few weeks. Bob
 
The arduino has some 5 volt input output (no pulse width modulation). I don't have the board in front of me, but I expect there are some unused pins. There is a similiar project (Hydra) that is being designed as a reef controller that may suit your needs better.
 
BobH said:
If you set the dimming to 100 and the ramp time to 0 could you use this to drive a solid state relay to operate something that needs a discreet on/off like a solenoid? If anyone has a board available I could use one, PM please. I seems the Chinese new year has most of the cheep board sources closed down for a few weeks. Bob
Click to expand...

I believe its supposed to be 255 and not 100 if using PWM??? Also you can simply just do HIGH or LOW state on a non PWM pins on your sketch instead of doing ramp, thus saving your PWM pins to other use.
 
Ok, I'm still a beginner on this digital stuff. I was planning on using the board and the sketch developed in this thread. My understanding is that the only pins brought out were intended to be PWM for dimming and the range is 0-100, off to on. I think at 100% on you get an un-pulsed 5 or 10 volts depending on what pin you use. I need to find out if I'm on the right track or not. I understand about the digital pins and maybe how to program them but I defiantly don't know enough to design a different board and write my own sketch.
 
Worst case you would have to solder a wire directly to a pad on the cirsuit board. Take a look at the Hydra I know it has digital output.
 
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