DIY LED lights

['vspec']

Ok, revisit time.

How easy i forgot terminology & the fact you used controllers. Extremely rusty indeed. i'll chock that up to stupidity on my part & keep moving like it never happened.

Ok, so clearly you've pushed a hell of a lot further than i did by using an intergrated control set-up, so i guess its time for me to learn some more. No shame in that...So any time your ready bud.

 

[O2surplus]

Here ya go VSPEC- These pictures should explain alot.

 

['vspec']

Hey bud. Thanks for taking the time here, appreciate it.

Ok, so as I mentioned, its been some time, so ive brought myself back to square one. Its a strange feeling actually, you keep filling the bucket, sooner or later, some can overflow & you've lost it.


So, first things first, researching your components. Needed to get better acquainted in order to understand your design principles. Not to mention the addition of a few more equations to the picture!

Straight to the source for the control chipset.

CAT4101

The pulse width modulation i thought was from the Arduino compartment exclusive, however i realised its integrated.Im assuming the chip side is I/O then the Arduino takes care of the rest?. I'll be asking you to delve alittle deeper on this one soon, cause its something that needed to be explored more.

You did your own PCB for this?

Top Photo

If im seeing this correctly, positive rail in, pin 1 you soldered your induction (It mentioned only for noise reduction?) I saw where you grabbed your resistance value & soldered, it looks like Rset & Grd are bridged?. Led input via blue wires from the face of the PCB.

Bottom Photo

Black & white neg wire to modulus chain series 1, parallel bridged, connecting other 4 series chains. Nothing wrong with this, besides losing the standard chain if one goes, (unless i cant see it) the only down side is if the link fails early on your parallel bridge It can effect alot more.

I would have done the same on the spread lens given the numbering of each series - hows it working out?

Now, lets talk turkey, i see your piggybacking the pos. It looks to go logicly to the pcb rail, & to the PWM. Getting back to the starting question, you want to expand on that.

Nice work by the way, you've treated us well. i'm enjoying delving into the internals. Still lots to learn though, when your ready, lets start breaking this puppy down based on the numbers & equations. kinda like reverse engineering, lets look at Reverse Calculations if you. That way myself, & others can assess the data given, work out whats required, then how its applied. Only way to understand it effectively i believe.

 

[O2surplus]

Alright VSPEC,

It's 1:45 am here, but I'll give this a go.
The 24vdc positive voltage connects to all 5 strings in parallel. The negative side connects to the common ground rail on the driver PCB.
All 5 strings are controlled independently by a CAT 4101. Therefore a failure in 1 string will NOT affect the other strings at all.

The CAT 4101 only requires 2 additional components to function properly.
1.) a small 1micro farad cap is soldered in between the 5 volt Vcc pin and the ground pin.( noise filtering of power supply)
2.) a small current setting resistor is soldered in between Rsense and ground. The value of the resistor can be changed to raise or lower the current through the LEDs.

I added a third resistor to the 5 volt Vcc/PWM circuit to "pull-up" the voltage, just incase 1 of the CAT chips were to short internaly.( makes for easier trouble shooting.)

The CAT 4101 chips need a 5 volt signal to "turn on". The ARDUINO provides the 5 volts and ,when programmed correctly, provides the PWM signal that causes dimming.

Heres a wiring diagram and some notated photos for you understanding and enjoyment.

 

['vspec']

Poor b@st@rd, it could have waited till tomorrow..lol

Black wire white strip I was under the assumption was the negative feed from the get go. Basing it on that, ive written the whole polarity run in reverse.

Man, you've thrown a spanner in the works with the control gear, I'm loven it, but still thumping to get through the outside box ..... Back to school i go!!!

 

[monsterberry]

love the project i seen a diy moonlighting some were on here and he used led rope lights and some guter whith end caps it looked awsome and not to technical as i am not brilleant with technical electrics im hopfally going to be trying it for my clowns 10g wen i do i will post some pics

 

['vspec']

love the project i seen a diy moonlighting some were on here and he used led rope lights and some guter whith end caps it looked awsome and not to technical as i am not brilleant with technical electrics im hopfally going to be trying it for my clowns 10g wen i do i will post some pics

no worries bud. If you take the time to build anything, we'll take the time to view it.

 

['vspec']

Alright VSPEC,

Heres a wiring diagram and some notated photos for you understanding and enjoyment.

You do realise if i was standing right next to you when you were explaining it, i could ask realtime questions & would have understood this in 10min, instead of the last few days
Electronics is all about visual perspective. If you can trace electrical topology in your mind, your fine.

 

[O2surplus]

[QUOTE='vspec';440465;2]You do realise if i was standing right next to you when you were explaining it, i could ask realtime questions & would have understood this in 10min, instead of the last few days
Electronics is all about visual perspective. If you can trace electrical topology in your mind, your fine.[/QUOTE]


That's what makes internet forums so much fun!
and why I finally drew up a wiring diagram!( I probably could have saved some confusion had I done that first.)

Here's a link to the pdf of the Onsemi CAT4101. This will explain what's going on inside the chip.http://www.onsemi.com/PowerSolutions/product.do?id=CAT4101TV-T75

 

[Clay]

Wow, I wish I had seen this thread sooner! Great work, and very informative! I keep planning to do a DIY LED setup, but I just haven't gotten around to it. I think it will be one of those winter projects.