Single button fan/lights controller with LCD Mod (Finished)

Last week I started work on electro-modding my CM Black Widow. It's not finished quite yet, but I wanted to show you all the progress I've been making.

After making a bit of a mess of the front panel of my old case (the one with the RGB leds all over the case if anyone rememebers?) I decided I wanted to keep this case pretty simple, with only a few mods to keep it looking nice. I also decided I wanted to keep the front panel pretty clutter free, and didn't want lots of knobs/switches etc for lights, fans and everything else, so I decided to make my own fanbus designed to do the job with just one rotary encoder:



The LCD was a 16x2 backlit (green) from Rapid, which I modded to make the backlight white (the sticky thing is still on the screen to protect it for now). In the pictures below it looks like you can't read the middle of the display too well, but that's how the camera sees it due to the fact it was being blinded by the led's for lighting up the clear knob (not shown) on the rotary encoder. Here it is in the dark:





The rotary encoder on the left controls the brightness/speed of the fans in the case. Pushing the knob changes between whatever is being controlled. At the moment I have it set as this sequence:

White Lights
UV Lights
Panel Lights
Case Fans
CPU Fan
Graphics Fan (- 80mm fan attached to huge heatsink of Leadtek card)

But I may change these to separate the molex lights and case feet into another category.
To prevent accidents, the graphics and CPU fan have an additional zener to prevent their voltage being taken below 5V. The zeners also act as a failsafe just in case for some reason the controller happens to blow up

The back of the controller looks like this:


The LCD controller connects to the reciever PCB with just three lines - 5V, 0V, Data. The actual PCB that connects to the lights/fans is shown below:



The funny looking black thing on the left is a heatsink temporarily attached to the darlington driver. Today or tommorow I will find a more suitable heatsink.

I situated the above PCB on the right hand side under the CD drives for ease of access.

The eject buttons on my Sony DVD/CD-RW combos were also modded to light up



I used some acrylic and shaped it the same as the old eject buttons then backlit them with white LED's to achieve this.

Finally here are some shots of the almost completed mod. I plan to place the LCD controller in the two bays above the CD drives, which is what I'll be working on either today or tommorow. A piece of clear plastic with one side painted black will be used to make the faceplate for the LCD controller.

Front/Side:


Rear/Side with panel off:


Side with panel off:


LED's along the bottom (White and UV):


LED's in the top of the case:

Above you can see a row of LED's in the 5.25" bays which I mounted to acylic then attached brackets to the acrylic to screw into the bays.

Illuminated case feet made from those things you put under furniture wheels etc. to stop the carpet being marked.


More updates in the next day or so hopefully.

Comments please!

 

-The LEDS all round the edge, beautiful man truely!
-The white lighting, i love it, im araid im a blue hater personally and i myself right now am riggin a rather multicoloured set up (u'll all c soon enough)
-The LED Screen.....dont fancy making me one for a small fee do ya?

 

I'll settle with the schematic

pure genious
it looks great

 

Very nice! I'm really interested in the microcontroller part: which PICs have you used and is it possible to have some details about the LCD controlling routines?

GREAT!

 

:O Now that sir is cool. You should sell a few of those controllers Is the lcd connected to the computer in anyway to display the data or is all that done through your circuitry? Easally worth at least £30

 

Thanks for the comments guys. The system is totally stand-alone and is not connected to the system in any way (apart from power). The PIC on the LCD board does most of the work, and sends the data to the reciever board via serial interface. The reciever board then just converts the data values into the correct duty cycle for each output.

The serial interface is not essential, but it keeps things tidy and means that when I take the front panel off my PC I'll just need to disconnect the small 3-pin connector instead of a big bunch of cables.

I used two PIC16F870's, but the choice of microcontroller isn't critical and depends how much expandability you want. I have many unused outputs ready for future expansion.

When the temperature sensors finally arrive (postman seems to be lazy lately!) the fan control will be automatic, with the option of setting fan speeds manually.

I'll try to put up some details of controlling the LCD from a PIC later today though it might be better in a new topic in the electronics forum.

I may make a couple of these with the outputs of the same board as the LCD if people wanted them, though the next month will be busy for me, so probably not until June.

 

Extreme tastiness here...

Slick dude! I'm with you on the minimalist look for the bezel. And the black and white lighting theme.

 

I'd be very intrested what kinda money u'd want for one of these with the temp sensor attached (im guessing u'll rig it to display the temprature natch).
I personally h8 automated fans speed, dont trust it, but still as a small beautiful fancontroller/temp sesnor thats amazing.


Also if i wasnt so lazy i'd make one of those LED trails u got round the bottom and back of ur case.

 

No updates worth showing yet, but have any of you guys got any ideas what I could do with the power light instead of it just being lit? Maybe a heart-beat style pulse? I need your ideas!

 

...or you could have it throb, iMac style. There are circuits for both. Mine is being rigged up so it throbs when the PC is off (but plugged into the mains, obviously), and is on when the PC is switched on. Oh, and the colour changes from blue to red if the WC fails.

Otherwise you could have a 10 led running light. You could have, say, green LEDs arranged behind a small dark plexi window to follow a ECG (heartbeat) curve; that way when the lights run they make a heartbeat monitor "blip".

Another crazy idea I once considered was this: you know those baby dolls which close their eyes when you lie them down? You could find a broken one at a car boot sale or rubbish tip. Take out one eye, mount it in a hole where the PC case badge would be, and rig up its mechanism so when the PC is off, the eye is closed, and when the PC is on, the eye opens up.

 

Awesome work, well done

 

Ok, I've made a little prototype of the power light, but I need somewhere to host a small 160kb video. Does anyone know where I can host it?

 

Email it to me: m e (at) m a t t j a s o n h (dot) c o m

 

Here is the (poor quality) video of what could possibly be the power light.
What do you think? Any other ideas?

http://www.mattjasonh.com/_media/steveyg/SDGPOWERLIGHT.AVI


Thanks to acrim for the hostage.

 

I've just been thinking about doing something like this myself - however my electronics knowledge is rather scant.

A schematic and/or parts list would be most appreciated - i like having a crack at all my mods as opposed to having them done for me.

Excellent work though

 

Is it help with the power light fader thingy or the fan controller that you want help with? If you want a PIC programmed with a fading sequence for a power light I'd be happy to program one and post it to you for the cost of a PIC and postage (probably just a first class stamp)

 

I can do the fading power light i found a circuit for that a while ago - it's the whole controller and LCD mod that i'm really interested by. Like yourself, i'm going for a case with really clean front panels and i came up with very similiar concepts to yourself, i.e. as few buttons as poss' and i intend to stealth the LCD so it's only visible when on, so it's the schemtics/parts for the controller i'm after.

Cheers for the offer though.

 

That fancontroller looks awesome . That throbbing LED actually remembered me of something i wanted to do also. But my knowledge of PIC and PWM is . Mind if i sent you a mail with my idea? Perhaps you could help me.

 

i don't know how to program a PIC either, but i'm going to learn ...

anyway: SteveyG: Really great work there!

Could you please post the chematics and the code (.hex?) for the PIC's? I REALLY want to make one of those myself!

I was going to make a softwarecontrolled fancontroller, but i think this might be better

 

The code for the PICs isn't finalised as I am still making ongoing modifications so I will not post any code yet.

I will be developing a simpler version after my exams at the end of May, with fan connectors and connectors for lights on the back of the LCD board (i.e. just one PCB). When this is done I'll post schematics/hex files and will probably offer to make completed controllers too.

Coorz, you should be able to send me an e-mail via the drop down menu on my username. Include your e-mail address with the message and I'll get back to you with whatever you want help with.




At the moment I'm having a hard time finding something suitable to use as the knob for the rotary encoder. I had the idea of using acrylic rod but nowhere seems to have any nearby, and I've been round every shop looking for products I could possibly hack for a bit of plastic rod but with no luck Anyone got any ideas??