Hi there. Im new to these forums, despite being a regular reader of the site for the last few years *sorry* and ive got a few questions, seeing as u guys here seem to know what yr talking about I bought one of those Akasa FC-01 controllers a while back and its turned out to be a hunk of junk. One channel has gone down, altho its still recieving around 10-11v cos the full power LED is still on. Damn surface mounted components means i havent a hope in hell of fixing it - unless anyone here knows what might be wrong I basically just wired up 2 evercool 8cm fans and a few days later it was toast. What i really wanna do is fix up my own controller as i have the soldering/wiring skills (just not any FC knowledge). Ive been eyeing up the Bit Tech 'rheo baybus u cant overload' as a potential, but its lowest setting of 1.25v is a bit of a worry for me - id prefer at least 5-6v lowest setting. Ive broken apart a zalman fanmate controller (the design is dead simple) and have thought about building 4 or 5 in parallel to act as a FC - can anyone recommend or shoot down this idea? I guess im just loathe to spend 25-30 quid on a shop bought one that could be built for under £10 Plus its good to have the bragging rights, yeah Hope someone can help, or maybe even reccommend another design i could use.... Laters.
I've designed a couple fan controllers if your interested. I'll post some pics soon. This is based on a simple design. 4x 1.5A LM317T Voltage regulators split into 8 chans. You will have 4 switches that do on-off-on. Off - 5v, you can have up or down to be 12 or 7v (either way however you like it). There is one led per chan (hence per switch) and the brightness varies depending on the position of the switch. I've also made a 5A vreg based 6chan controller that needs you to purchase a voltmeter as listed in my 'high voltage' log. But again it can go as low as 1.25V.
The second one is actually a multipurpose PCB using an LM338T (5A max) but needs a pot and that expensive voltmeter I was talking about earlier. Any other designs you want custom done just ask me I can get it done and in your hands in less than 2weeks.
thanx for the help. what i really wanna do i keep the design simple - the fanmate, for example, only comprises a 7805 (i think) voltage regulator, a 680 ohm resistor and a 1k lin pot. I basically am thinking of making 5 or 6 in parallel - would it be foolish to use such a simple circuit in a fan controller?
Here are some of our articles which may be of interest. http://www.bit-tech.net/article/80/ http://www.bit-tech.net/article/51/ http://www.bit-tech.net/article/32/
cheers for the links - the last 1 i'm familiar with. is there any way i could alter the circuit so that the lowest voltage available is 5v ? would swapping the voltage regulators with ones designed with a 5v reference voltage do, or would more have to be altered? thanx 4 help so far guys
well ive got some questions about this design http://www.bit-tech.net/article/32/ the first LED on the left gets power form +12V but will the resistor(180Ohm) be a little bit too small?
(Shameless plug) Would this be worth mentioning? http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=40628
