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Therapeutic Panel Wiring for the Dew Controller


MarkyD

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It's been a while coming but hopefully this will be the final bit of layout I need to do for my Dew Controller/USB Hub/Mount PS etc.  Just spent an hour wiring up the power supplies and Arduino out of it's case to make things easier.  Just have to secure it into the case  and then plug in the sensor, camera, usb ports etc that are attached to the case walls.

I still have to write the program to control the Canon for time lapse/multiple long exposures via the LCD Touch Screen but the hardware is now there so it shouldn't be to difficult.  Using the Mega has given me so much more processing power and IO ports than the Uno the ideas still keep cropping up so it may change again :)

Dew Controller.jpg

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Mark

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A bit cramped in there :)  Still have to wire in the fuse dist board (designing and making the PCB atm) and the panel sockets for the dew heaters/sensors and mount power supply.  USB ports all fit nice and tight with mirror fan and camera shutter connectors.  The 3 top holes are for 12V and 5V sockets if I ever need them

image007.jpg

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MArk

 

image006.jpg

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Hi Mark,

Looking really good.  One question, do you use any sort of overvoltage protection on the regulated supplies? I have built a similar power distribution box and now I am wondering if I should have added crowbar circuits. My regulators are cheapo ebay boards and although they work fine, it could be awfully expensive if they failed.

Regards, Hugh

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1 hour ago, hughgilhespie said:

Hi Mark,

Looking really good.  One question, do you use any sort of overvoltage protection on the regulated supplies? I have built a similar power distribution box and now I am wondering if I should have added crowbar circuits. My regulators are cheapo ebay boards and although they work fine, it could be awfully expensive if they failed.

Regards, Hugh

Hi Hugh

No I haven't got any over voltage protection.  The 14Volt mount supply is a buck convertor fed from the 12.5Volt main PS which has over-voltage/over-temp etc protection built in.  All my stuff is from Pololu so it is pretty reliable.  If it fails it should only output zero or max of 12.5V?  I do have a plan to auto shut off via the Arduino if the mount volts gets to high as I am reading the input and output voltages through that all ready.  This was the first draft of the screen - it displays more information now with calibration screens etc

20160228_212120.jpg

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Mark

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Hi Mark,

Thanks for the info. That Pololu step-up regulator looks neat! The only step-up (buck) converter I am using is an ebay one to change my 14 volt input rail to 24 volts to power the stepper that rotates my obsy dome. That said, I do use two step-down buck converters, again ebay sourced, to drop my 14 volt rail. One provides about 8 volts to power several Arduino clones - I like to use the onboard linear regulators to do the final reduction to 5 volts as I hope this might give a less noisy supply. I also use a buck converter to provide a 5 volt rail for various sensors in the obsy. This is the one I am most worried about as I am fairly sure that 14 volts WOULD fry the sensors - the Nanos would probably survive a dose of 14 volts, the absolute maximum is about 15 volts I think.

I bought the components to make a couple of crowbar circuits but inertia has got in the way - again! Eventually though I will get around to it.

Regards, Hugh 

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Wiring finished.  I ran out of 6Amp red and Black wire so I robbed the van for some 0.75 stranded 2 core flex.  That's why there are some brown and blue wires in the loom

Now just waiting on a some Aluminum Composite sheet to remake the front panel after I made some changes.  I decided not to have the fuses on the panel but inside the box which means there will be 12 holes left on the original panel.  If they blow and it's not caused by me shorting them out there is a problem somewhere that will most likely require the panel to be removed for investigation anyway

I may also have to replace the foam on the left covering the inlet vent holes to create more air flow - I have a source for some filter material from my old customers when I worked for Xerox :0)

 

image006.jpg
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  • 4 weeks later...

Ok I just can't leave this project alone and have to upgrade it every time I see something I like.  This time I upgraded the TFT LCD to a 7" from the 4.3".  This way I can get more on one screen instead of switching between 4 or 5 screens.  I have now added a camera intervalometer to the program.  I decided to go this route as I was forever changing batteries in the Hahnel Giga T Pro II.  This way it is constantly powered along with the camera plugged either into the 230V or by the 12V outputs on the case.  The only thing left that needs doing (until I think of something else) is to program the setting of the RTC via the screen and to tidy up the layout of the LCD

 

image006.jpg

LCD's are a pain to photograph - I can never get them in focus :(

 

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