Cptbjorn Please Help Me

[salmonshutters]

I brought a light that you built for another member. The light had an arduino with your diy drivers. The arduino board corroded and I was wondering how I could fix it without buying new drivers and a new arduino. I have already bought a new arduino. Any info you have that could help me would be great.

[cptbjorn]

there should be two wires going from teh driver board to the arduino, those are the dimming wires. they need to each be attached to an arduino PWM pin, I usually use 5 and 6 but you can also use 3, 9, 10 and 11 I think.

 

have you used an arduino before and/or do you know how to code at all?

[cptbjorn]

wait i did it different because of the switch, there should be two wires coming from the switch to the arduino and THOSE should be the dimmer wires. hook those up to pins 5 and 6 of the new arduino and load this program:

 

here's the code I shipped on the arduino board

 

you can see I brought all the pertinent variables to the top of the program so its pretty easy to mess with the ramp times, levels, on times etc.

[marinoob]

this is the exact code i have been wanting to make and never could figure it out. i have had my arduino for months and this is what i was looking for. you are my hero thanks for posting it out in the open. do you mind if i post a link on my led thread with credit to you?

[cptbjorn]

no problem use it however you want. you can even say you made it up, i really don't care

 

you'll notice it uses 59749 as a multiplier in the delay functions, that's really supposed to be 60,000 to make the program take exactly 24 hours and if your program is starting earlier or later every day you can mess with those to fix it.

[Genj]

This is great! Now I just need to figure out if I can mod it to support 0-10v.

[cptbjorn]

10v pwm? or 0-10vdc? i've never used a meanwell so i don't know how they dim.

 

easiest way for 10v pwm would be to use a zener or lm317 to get 10v and apply that to both positive dimming inputs and then switch the low sides with transistors or logic level mosfet

 

for dc you should be able to do the same thing if you find the right value of cap to put across and smooth it out.

[salmonshutters]

but I can't use the pc power cord straight into the arduino can I?

[cptbjorn]

the 19v power should still pass through the old arduino so you can just plug that in to give the drivers power and then run the new arduino off the power adapter that should have came with it.

 

a more permanent solution would be to remove the old arduino and connect the 19v directly to the driver board DC input. you'll still need to use a separate supply for the new arduino because the stock boards can only take up to 20v in maximum and 19v is really pushing it.

[salmonshutters]

So do i attach the power to directly to the wire connnected in this photo and then connect the arduino to the switch off of the 4-pin plug

[cptbjorn]

correct

 

but try not to connect power to the board while the LEDs are unplugged, the circuit should be protected but it is always better not to test protection modes.

[salmonshutters]

Yea I've got nothing after doing so. How would I know if the drivers are bad?

 

 

correct

 

but try not to connect power to the board while the LEDs are unplugged, the circuit should be protected but it is always better not to test protection modes.

[cptbjorn]

wait they don't light up at all? did they when you got them?

 

do you have a multimeter?

 

just for testing you can disconnect the fan and the 4 pin dimming connector and just do the driver board and LEDs, it should light them up to 100%. you did ground to black and 19v to purple on the power connector right?

[salmonshutters]

could this be the problem?

 

 

Yea, purple would be the center power aka positive and black the outside aka neg

 

I've tried that and there also is no light.

[cptbjorn]

hard to see from pic, that part should look like this:

 

[salmonshutters]

yea its fine, It did work when i orginally got it. When its plugged in i don't get any volt reading on either pin set that goes out to the led's

[cptbjorn]

so it reads 18-19v on the input, the LEDs are plugged in and they aren't lighting up and you aren't getting any voltage at the output?

[salmonshutters]

correct

[cptbjorn]

then something must have gotten shorted out/broken somehow

[cptbjorn]

i just checked and i'm out of lm3404s, if you want to sign up for an account at national.com and get some free samples of 3404s (costs you nothing) and then mail me that driver and chips I'll fix that board. pm if interested.

[salmonshutters]

i plugged it in one last time, however it for sure shorted out now, the two little black rectangles with 8 pins coming out of them on each side started smoking, So if you would like to play around with it I'd be more than happy to ship it to you.

[salmonshutters]

http://www.national.com/order/samples.cgi?...M%2FLM3404.html

 

These?

[cptbjorn]

started smoking

 

that is... troubling lol.

 

sending pm

 

it has to be the MR ones, not the MA. The MR ones have a ground pad on the bottom that makes them way better thermally, kinda important when you run them at their full 1A capacity.

 

these ones

 

edit: ok apparently I have to wait an hour before I can send you a pm