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Powering BF mini


Tom@HaslettMI

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jedimasterben

Pretty much anything will work. The Electric Imp is rated for 80mA at 3.3v, which would be about 53mA at 5v. Absolute maximum is 400mA 3.3v, which is 264mA at 5v.

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Tom@HaslettMI

Pretty much anything will work. The Electric Imp is rated for 80mA at 3.3v, which would be about 53mA at 5v. Absolute maximum is 400mA 3.3v, which is 264mA at 5v.

Thanks Ben! That's great news. I'm trying to avoid excessive wall-warts in my lighting upgrade!

 

Tom

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jedimasterben

That's why I'm thankful my driver boards not only have mounts for the LDD drivers, but also for SCW converters to power the fans, the BF Mini (which mounts right to the board), and an Arduino for true 25KHz PWM fan control. One 54v power cord coming in. :)

 

20150623_233629.jpg

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Tom@HaslettMI

That's pretty slick. Looks like you can run a ton of LEDS with that board.

 

While I've dabbled in the DIY LED world (I currently run an APEX controlled Lumia 5.1), that's board is on a whole nutha level. My plan is to replace the Lumia with a NanoBox fixture.

 

Tom

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi,

Sorry to jump on this thread but my question is similar.

 

My Mini is awaiting my at the post office tonight (thanks for speedy service Dave!) and have been rooting through my spares drawer for a suitable power supply, I have multiple USB type plugs that can use, but also have one rated at 12.0v ,1000mA. Would that be ok, or too much ampage?

Cheers
Gareth

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jedimasterben

Obviously, the less voltage the better (as the EI runs on 3.3v, it drops any other voltage to 3.3), but 12v is fine. The power supply is constant voltage, so it only provides as much amperage as the device needs.

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Thanks Ben - finally got the bluefish this morning. Can report it was plug n play perfect with my Nanobox - from unpacking to operating took about 5mins. Very happy, now have to upgrade my light with the V3 chip I also received.

 

Gareth.

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  • 2 months later...

hey, I just need to get some confirmation before I fry everything here :)

got a driver with a SCW03B-12 for the fan.

so I could hijack this for powering the mini with 12V?

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jedimasterben

Just keep in mind that the SCW B models need 18-36v, so if you have a 48v power supply you'll blow it.

 

What fan(s) are you powering? The 3w SCW doesn't put out a lot of current.

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Hey ben, thanks for the reply.

Actually I am talking about the marine pac3 LED driver, coming with a 24V power supply.

It features two LDD-700H and the SCW03B-12.

The Fan is a 12V PWM fan and runs very well ;)

As it is ready for use with the big BF I am going to mod it to work with the mini. I dont need all the extra features of the big BF, and the wait for the future add ons is too long ;)

The MP3 already has the headphone jack, so I am going to make a headphone cable to the mini.

And for saving an extra power supply the plan was to hijack the 12V output of the SCW03B-12 to power the BFmini.

Good plan?

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  • 4 weeks later...

I did the modification to power and control my mp3 via the bluefish mini. I put in a voltage fan controller, as the marine pack fan is controlled via the pwm signal of one led channel.

It just struck me, that I could reroute the pwm cable of the fan to one of the free channels of the bluefish mini to use it as fan control via the bluefish app.

This should work, right?

I would loose the light dependent fan control, but I could program an identical curve in the app. I get full flexibility on the other hand.

Or can two channels be connected somehow in the app to follow the same pattern or sth?

Thanks for shedding some light to this :)

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jedimasterben

Fans use 25KHz PWM. The Bluefish Mini only sends a 480Hz or 530Hz signal. The fan will buzz and make noise like you wouldn't believe.

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:( too bad.

Well, I am pretty happy with what I got so far.

A dedicated fan pwm channel or two would definitely be an improvement for the next gen of bf controllers.

So nanobox is using a custom fan control plus the bf mini in it's latest models...Haven't really looked into it.

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On second thought, still wondering how Neill does it by using the led pwm signal for the fan, which in the first place comes from the bf.

Well, it's his secret I guess, or a special fan.

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jedimasterben

On second thought, still wondering how Neill does it by using the led pwm signal for the fan, which in the first place comes from the bf.

Well, it's his secret I guess, or a special fan.

It is not using the PWM signal directly ;)

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