I can't beleive you just made another great video that will help me solve the exact same problem you had with your bench power supply. My small Rideng I built 5 years ago is getting on my nerves with it's screaming fan. Problem will soon be solved thanks to you. Cheers !
Very usefull lots of people in South Africa recently installed solar inverters mostly with 2 fans and these are mostly not speed controlled mine is in a cupboard in the hallway and kicks both fans in for n9 reason at all with temps in the low 30s deg c very useful video thanks
Absolutely brilliant! thanks for showing me this, I didn't know anything like this was available. I couldn't find this one locally but I did find one with the exact same LEDs and setup procedure on Amazon, but its 12V only and has a 4 pin PWM output. It sorted my noisy CCTV DVR! :)
Awesome video, I want to cool a M2 WD 850x NMVE with heatsink 2Tb drive that I have in a Thunderbolt 4 enclosure and it get really hot when busy 54 Deg, so I now know what I need and your video was superb, thanks!!
“I like tinkering with shit”. Excellent philosophy! This was a useful video. I wasn’t aware of the existence of these cheap fan controllers, but now I am. I wonder if it would be worth installing one in an Original XBox, to bypass the existing fan speed control.
Nice video could be useful in several retro computer applications. I'm thinking I could use it in a coco 2. Did you try hooking up your scope to look at the outputs? Is it just a buck converter or does it work like a PWM, so it can raise and lower the duty cycle to make the fan run faster and slower?
Some fan controllers always start with 12 volt to get the fan to spin up and then they lower the voltage and the fan will spin even if the voltage is very low. Because you connected the power before the fan we will not know if this fan controller work like that.
Very nice project! 3-pin fans, like the ones used for cooling PCs, do not have a speed control input: the 3rd pin on the connector is for sensing the rotation speed (commonly 2 pulses/revolution). The connector on the controller seems to be just like the one you would find on a PC motherboard but if you plug a PC case/CPU fan into this controller you would get the electronics in the fan shorting the 3-pin to ground every revolution. Can you check if the controller is simply pulling up the 3rd pin to the supply voltage of the microcontroller?
Just checked. The 3rd pin is floating, on closer inspection I can see it connects back to an unpopulated pad labelled C next to the power input. So I guess it's just there as a passthrough option for speed sensing
This is a great solution -- already giving me ideas to implement in my lab. What did you do with the 2 watt, 150 ohm resistor that was previously regulating the fan when the supply was set to less than 1 amp?
can't get the damn thing to stop when the temp is below the lower threshold. it's spinning at its min rpm even if I set that threshold to the highest value.
@@TheRetroChannel Sweet. I have a mate in Canberra. Just shipped a C64 to him. I've said he should contact you when it gets there. If you're up for that.. It has a couple of tiny issues.
Lovely stuff Mark! I'd noticed that fan kicking into screamo mode in previous episodes.
Great fix.
I can't beleive you just made another great video that will help me solve the exact same problem you had with your bench power supply. My small Rideng I built 5 years ago is getting on my nerves with it's screaming fan. Problem will soon be solved thanks to you. Cheers !
Very usefull lots of people in South Africa recently installed solar inverters mostly with 2 fans and these are mostly not speed controlled mine is in a cupboard in the hallway and kicks both fans in for n9 reason at all with temps in the low 30s deg c very useful video thanks
Absolutely brilliant! thanks for showing me this, I didn't know anything like this was available. I couldn't find this one locally but I did find one with the exact same LEDs and setup procedure on Amazon, but its 12V only and has a 4 pin PWM output. It sorted my noisy CCTV DVR! :)
Awesome video, I want to cool a M2 WD 850x NMVE with heatsink 2Tb drive that I have in a Thunderbolt 4 enclosure and it get really hot when busy 54 Deg, so I now know what I need and your video was superb, thanks!!
Really good to way to explain, and respect from Pakistan...
“I like tinkering with shit”. Excellent philosophy!
This was a useful video. I wasn’t aware of the existence of these cheap fan controllers, but now I am. I wonder if it would be worth installing one in an Original XBox, to bypass the existing fan speed control.
Could be worth it on an unmodified Xbox. But I think most softmods allow fine tuning of the fan speed
Is it possible to connect these boards in parallel to control one fan with two temperature sensors?
I genuinely choked on my beer laughing when you said, "and you know, I like tinkering with shit...". Good call :-)
looks neat. I may try one out
Nice video could be useful in several retro computer applications. I'm thinking I could use it in a coco 2. Did you try hooking up your scope to look at the outputs? Is it just a buck converter or does it work like a PWM, so it can raise and lower the duty cycle to make the fan run faster and slower?
I did check the output on the scope after filming. Although they call it a PWM controller, it's just adjusting the voltage
Some fan controllers always start with 12 volt to get the fan to spin up and then they lower the voltage and the fan will spin even if the voltage is very low. Because you connected the power before the fan we will not know if this fan controller work like that.
Very nice project!
3-pin fans, like the ones used for cooling PCs, do not have a speed control input: the 3rd pin on the connector is for sensing the rotation speed (commonly 2 pulses/revolution).
The connector on the controller seems to be just like the one you would find on a PC motherboard but if you plug a PC case/CPU fan into this controller you would get the electronics in the fan shorting the 3-pin to ground every revolution.
Can you check if the controller is simply pulling up the 3rd pin to the supply voltage of the microcontroller?
Just checked. The 3rd pin is floating, on closer inspection I can see it connects back to an unpopulated pad labelled C next to the power input. So I guess it's just there as a passthrough option for speed sensing
This is a great solution -- already giving me ideas to implement in my lab. What did you do with the 2 watt, 150 ohm resistor that was previously regulating the fan when the supply was set to less than 1 amp?
I just left it there. With the fan now getting power from elsewhere, there's no current flowing through that resistor
can this work for laptop fans as well?
can't get the damn thing to stop when the temp is below the lower threshold. it's spinning at its min rpm even if I set that threshold to the highest value.
Not a fan of noise.
Hola, are you in Canberra?
I am
@@TheRetroChannel Sweet. I have a mate in Canberra. Just shipped a C64 to him. I've said he should contact you when it gets there. If you're up for that.. It has a couple of tiny issues.
Yeah, happy to answer any questions if he gets stuck
"DC 5V 12V PWM Speed Controller", doesn't PWM need 4 pins? This is a PWM controller 1005004058715791