Electronics LED fan wiring and control of LED's - Mini Guide (post #13)

Hi,

did a quick search and didn't feel confident with the information from other threads, so I apologize if it's a redundant question.

I just picked up 4 of these and while they are know as fantastic low flow fans (the non LED kind), I wanted to try with the LED kind and see how they are.

My question is, by looking at the picture8click on the bottom image to get a nice full screen image), if I wanted to hook up a rocker switch (really any on off switch) to control the LED's, which wires should I be snipping? It comes prewired with a 3 pin into 2 4 pin molex's (which I don't really understand what all the molex's are for) and before I go and experiment with my snippers, I wanted to hear what others had to say.

What would be the best way to control the LED's on these fans? I don't want to turn the fans down (well i will, but that's what my BigNg is for), I just want to be able to turn the LED's on and off separately.

is that easy to do?

 

You'd have to peel the sticker and cut one of the wires to the leds, unless there is a little circuit board under there, in which case you'd probably have to cut a track.
I'd cut the black gnd wire, and just have a single wire coming out, twisted along with the rest of the fan wiring, and then routed to a switch where ever you want it, and that switch earths this wire to the case or some other gnd connection.

It's not hard to peel the sticker without damaging them, on the old noisy fans that i've oiled anyway. I've lifted them by carefully using a little stanley knife, then put a drop of oil, and stick the label back down. A couple needed a drop of glue to keep the sticker back down.

If you want to be shown exactly where to cut & then solder the led trigger wire, then get the fans, peel the sticker, and take a pic or two.

 

Ok, I'll have to do that then. I'll post pics when i get home from work, I already have the fans waiting on the workbench.

 

ok, so here's the pics that I said I would get. the quality may be off a little, the camera was having a hard time focusing because of the transparent plastic (it kept wanting to focus behind the fan).













Does that help? It is a circuit board, and the way I figure, couldn't I just cut off the 4 pin molex's and wire some switch to the remaining bits? Or do I need to do more than that? Most likely it's gotta be the 12v yellow wire huh? and a blackie?

 

ok here you go. make sure to cut only the little black wire hidden behind the bigger one! the switch can go anywhere, but connect it like in the picture. and yea, i drew on your pic in paint so the switch is represented by the blue square.



for two fans:

 

so, I need to run a new wire around to all the grnd wired (represented by your blue line) and then connect 1 wire only to the switch? that's it? What if I want to connect 2 fans? just run 2 grnd wires to the same switch?

BTW- thanks for the help!

 

yea that's it. cut all the led ground wires & connect all 4 in a chain. the end of that wire will go to one leg on a switch then the other side of the switch goes to ground where the main power wires are soldered on. for another fan just hook the end of the wire to the same side of the switch for the first one. i edited the pic in the post above, i had left something out. and the second pic shows two fans. the fans i have done this on personally had a loop going around the fan so it was different.

 

+1 for lost modders instructions

As he said, where there are two black wires next to each other, make sure you only cut the thin black wire!

And of course, make sure you either secure your wiring well or insulate the connections with heatshrink, so that you don't make any short circuits. I'd probably also use an old soldering iron tip to melt away some trenches in the plastic to make room for the wiring, and when the sticker is back on, the fan will appear unmodded.

Put some pics up when you are done! This will be like a fan mod guide

 

Thanks! I like the sound of a fan mod guide. After reading what was said about securing the new wires, I think there is just enough room for a sneaky ninja modder to thread the new wires under the plastic. It looks like the solder points that are covered is spacing it out enough.

 

OK, these pics look good. I'll attempt this on the weekend and make sure I take a lot of pics, I hope my shoddy soldering skills don't show on the final results *fingers crossed*

 

I really love this forum, people are so willing to help out on problems, its a bit like microsofts online assistance ..but useful !!!!!
Any one fancy wiring up my UV LED's and fans for me? lol thought I'd ask ..

 

Well this'll help in my modding later

*Bookmark'd*

 

Completed

OK. I said that I would post my work when I was done, so here it is.

I'm a complete nab when it comes to almost everything modding, and what I've learned has been off of the kind forum users like those found mainly through Bit Tech (so it feels good I can contribute a little something back). Being the nab as stated, this 1 fan mod took me about 2 hours. I found the solder work the hardest, and most time consuming as I was working with very small diam. wire. Those of you who solder all the time, I'm sure could whip through this in 35mins.


Here's the steps:

STEP 1

I began by cutting all the black wires as instructed that connected the LED's to the PCB board. The picture shows a wire cutter being used, but this was for illustrative purposes only; I ended up using an Art Razorblade Knife (or Exacto or whatever it's called) as the wirecutters would not fit into the small area's that were not covered by plastic.

(pic A)


STEP 2

After cutting all wires I began on the side just after the main connection area so that I would end there. I began by soldering the 2 ends together, and then using the smallest heatshrink that I had. A Heat Gun is highly recommended for this. I next coupled the middle of the wire to the next end, thus saving solder steps. To do that, I cut the rubber off with the razor exposing the bare wire (pic B). I then used a slightly larger heat shrink to safeguard this coupling and moved on to the next junction. Progress is shown in pic C. and pic D.


(pic B)


(pic C)


(pic D)


STEP 3

After completing all the LED's, I ran the wire down the fan channel by the main circuit area. I then connected a new ground wire to the main connection where the LED wire was earlier. I also ran this wire down the same channel. I used a very slim piece of electrical tape to hold the wires in place. I may substitute this for hot glue later. At this point, I connected the two black wires to a non-led rocker switch. With the wires connected, I turned on the fan via my PSU (also jumping the PSU by connecting a wire from the green connection to a black/grnd connection on the 24 wire molex). It worked and the LED's were off (pic E)! I then put the LED's on using the switch (pic F), and that worked as well! I then turned it off and on for the next few minutes while patting myself on the back. Very happy with the finish here.

(pic E)


(pic F)


STEP 4 - GO NINJA!

Here's my semi-lame attempt at hiding my work, and I may change this in the future with just black elect. tape, or whatever I may find. But for now, I think it looks good from outside the case, but if you were right up on the fan, you would notice that something wasn't quite right.

What I attempted to do was burn a groove in the plastic to tuck the wires in. The problem that arose was I was nervous about going to far and dripping plastic onto the circuit board. So I only went down about halfway which left the wire slightly on top of the cover. Also, my wiring itself had been a tad too short, so that the loop isn't perfect or a perfect circle, it pulls a little in.

After the groove was cut, I reapplied the sticker and that's what you see in the last picture (pic G). What's left to do is sleeve the exposed wires with black sleeving, and then decide where the switch will go. Oh, and if anyone could be so kind as to tell me how to get rid of the 4 pin molex's, I would appreciate it (or just tell me what the best solution is as I don't want or need extra molex's hanging around and would like for the fan to have 1 molex only. You can see what I'm referring to in the previous pics)

(pic G)


I didn't take any pics of the rocker switch, but this is simple to do if anyone wants to see that. If there are other pic requests, just ask as I may do 1 more fan and can take more pics.

Again, thanks for the help, and I hope this mini guide helps you!

 

GOOD JOB! That's exactly what I had hoped for. You asked for help & followed through with a nice mod. Congrats! On eliminating the molex connectors, I painted another pic. Again the yellow line means cut. To make this easier, remove the wires from the fan connector by pressing the bent parts down. The bent tabs are shown in the blue box and marked by blue dots. Cut the wires as short as possible but leave enough to put a touch of heat shrink. Or you could cut them further away from the connector & solder on your other fan. Removing that connector is the time to sleeve as well. Questions?

 

nah, that's what I figured, but I just wanted a second opinion. Awesome help, it's much appreciated!

 

You're welcome. Now waiting for more!

 

HELP!!! EPIC FAIL½!!!!

Somewhere I've made a mistake, or wired up something wrong and now I smell like burnt circuits (insert sniffle here and small crying sound).

I'm finally wiring all this up to my system and have connected it all through a junction box as seen here


to two rocker buttons like so:


Now I know that I've done all my wiring right (for the most part concerning lights) as I've been playing with the lights for the last two days (off on off on off on off on, I never get tired of it) so that the lighting of all the LED arrays is correct and the lights work. Even the fan lights. No worries.

Now here comes the problem and smoking issue in this order:
1. I connected the LED fan to the BigNg and turned everything on. The fan started with the LIGHTS ON. Strange I thought, and flipped the rocker switch to see if I had control and 'zzzip' went the BigNg's led and a little smoke came out. I quickly shut off the PSU and checked for damage. I disconnected the fan and rechecked the power on the BigNG. Everything with the BigNg seemed normal (LED's and reading sensorbus and so on, even status LED I have connected to the front of my case).
2. I next tried to plug in just the fan (plugged in a 4 pin molex that had a fan extension as I'm checking all wiring before putting in the mobo) and disconnected the junctionbox. The Fan Worked but the LED's were on? I turned off the power and plugged in the Junctionbox. Turned back on the PSU and 'zzzip' this time a little smoke came from somewhere by the junctionbox. I had a heartattack and quickly turned off everything. Rechecked everything by plugging in only one component at a time and keeping everything separate. Everything checked out ok.
3. Tried connecting the fan to the BigNg by itself with no junctionbox, and teh fan+lights immediately came on.

So I'm confused and a little shaken up as I've dumped so much time into electronics that I don't want to bork everything in the last minute because of some faulty wiring with either the fan or something (I'm guessing that it has to be the fan, but I'm not sure how). I really think it's the fan.

Does anyone know where I went wrong or where the mistake can be? I followed the details to the letter just like in the mini guide I posted. It seemed to work before, but this was before I introduced the junctionbox and/or the BigNg. Can the fan be getting too much power? And why are the lights on sometimes and sometimes not? What's really strange is that if I leave the fan unconnected, I can control the lights by themselves with the junctionbox.

PLEASE HELP!!!

 

Anyone?

 

Just saw this now.

I'm not sure what's happening here, i'd need to see the whole wiring arrangement, or an accurate circuit diagram of it.

Chances are you've just wired something incorrectly, but now that smoke came out from near the junction box? What do you think released the smoke? Whatever cooked will show burn damage, be it a wire, or an electronic component. If it was just a wire that cooked, well the short circuit could have easily damaged things like the bigng or psu or a fan.

So just to confirm, what works now? Is any individual part blown or not working properly now?

It would also be good to see a wiring diagram of how you plan to connect everything, showing stuff like bigng, how many fans & lights you have, all switches & junction box, psu, the lot. A quick but accurate sketch in paint or whatever editor would be great for this.

 

OK, I'll see what I can do, but I've never done a diagram in my life. . .

I'm not sure if the smoke came from the junction box, or near the fan. But I can guarantee that smoke came from underneath the heatsink of the BigNg when I flipped the switch (I assumed it was the LED that perhaps burnt out on the BigNg , but it seems to work now, or at least theres still a blinking light under the heatsink. . .).

All components work individually, but not with the fan plugged in at all.

To explain further, I can have power to the junction box, and power to the BigNg/sensorbus (2 separate components that work together if you're not familiar with it) and control all LED's in the case, including the lights on the fan, but not the blades of the fan as that's not plugged in.

I can have the fan plugged in by itself only, and the fan will spin, and sometimes the lights are on, sometimes they're not.

I'll take some pictures and try and draw something for you. I'll post in a couple of hours. ..