RoadWarrior
12-18-01, 01:23 AM
I saw those LED fans and thought they were kinda cute......
... but kinda pointless.
Then I remembered something else I'd seen.....
mechanically scanned clock (http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lab/3685/analog.htm)
and the braincells went into overtime. :)
So, ( and I guess some of you may be way ahead of me with that little hint) here's an extremely cool plan I am considering. Dunno if I'll ever get round to it, I have way too many ideas and way too little time.
There's a few ways to follow this train of thought to make LED fans a little more interesting. i) the ultimate, a large 120mm fan modded with an array of LEDs a PIC in the hub for timing and driving it, that displays real time temperature and speed readings.
ii) simpler digital or analogue electronics in the hub (smaller fans possible) to make the LEDs "chase" or similar resulting in pulsing circle patterns.
So here's how I think you could make it work.....
For the "ultimate" you need a large fan, 120mm in the front of your case would be best. You need I think a minimum of 7 LEDs to make a decent character display, and you need the area of a 120mm to do that in. Also you need the torque to spin all the electronics you are gonna stick on it.
Now the only connection from the PC to the fan I would have at all is the power. That makes things far more managable. How do I figure on transferring any data for real time temp display? Simple! Infra red link to the PIC or microcontroller, on the hub. No wires no problem!.
Next consideration is keeping the blades as clean as possible. Now if you pull apart a 7 segment display you'll see tiny little surface mount diodes,..... bingo! So since there's 7 blades on most fans and we can do a display with 7 diodes, we can put one on each blade to keep it balanced. Now I consider the best approach to wiring the things to the hub might well be conductive paint. No heavy wiring to mess up the balance, and you can paint equal lenght stripes on each blade easily, so it looks kinda okay when stopped.
Also we need to keep things real small on the hub, I woud suggest either surface mount or semi free form wiring, with everything taken directly to the chips pins using the chip as the base for the circuit. The right PICs will be able to drive the LEDs directly and take input from an IR diode directly. also you need to arrange an RPM indicator for the PIC to compensate the timing.
I'd cover the hub with a "spinner" like they have on airplane propellers, You might find one at a chop that deals in RC model aircraft or use the top of a plastic egg to neatly conceal the electronics on the hub.
For less than the ultimate, simple chaser light circuits with no IR link should be straightforward and a bit more exciting than just rings of light. I'd recommend using the miniature lights and paint connections for these too though. This will be more adaptable to smaller fans I would think.
anyway, that's my ideas for a truly awesome LED fan mod, hope it is useful to other people, I'd really love to do it someday. Thing is, my mods tend to look a bit ghetto, aimed at function rather than form, so I don't know if I'll ever have a nice enough case to show this off to full advantage. I figure some of you guys might run with it and make a really nice centerpiece for a custom case out of it or something.
regards,
Road Warrior
... but kinda pointless.
Then I remembered something else I'd seen.....
mechanically scanned clock (http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lab/3685/analog.htm)
and the braincells went into overtime. :)
So, ( and I guess some of you may be way ahead of me with that little hint) here's an extremely cool plan I am considering. Dunno if I'll ever get round to it, I have way too many ideas and way too little time.
There's a few ways to follow this train of thought to make LED fans a little more interesting. i) the ultimate, a large 120mm fan modded with an array of LEDs a PIC in the hub for timing and driving it, that displays real time temperature and speed readings.
ii) simpler digital or analogue electronics in the hub (smaller fans possible) to make the LEDs "chase" or similar resulting in pulsing circle patterns.
So here's how I think you could make it work.....
For the "ultimate" you need a large fan, 120mm in the front of your case would be best. You need I think a minimum of 7 LEDs to make a decent character display, and you need the area of a 120mm to do that in. Also you need the torque to spin all the electronics you are gonna stick on it.
Now the only connection from the PC to the fan I would have at all is the power. That makes things far more managable. How do I figure on transferring any data for real time temp display? Simple! Infra red link to the PIC or microcontroller, on the hub. No wires no problem!.
Next consideration is keeping the blades as clean as possible. Now if you pull apart a 7 segment display you'll see tiny little surface mount diodes,..... bingo! So since there's 7 blades on most fans and we can do a display with 7 diodes, we can put one on each blade to keep it balanced. Now I consider the best approach to wiring the things to the hub might well be conductive paint. No heavy wiring to mess up the balance, and you can paint equal lenght stripes on each blade easily, so it looks kinda okay when stopped.
Also we need to keep things real small on the hub, I woud suggest either surface mount or semi free form wiring, with everything taken directly to the chips pins using the chip as the base for the circuit. The right PICs will be able to drive the LEDs directly and take input from an IR diode directly. also you need to arrange an RPM indicator for the PIC to compensate the timing.
I'd cover the hub with a "spinner" like they have on airplane propellers, You might find one at a chop that deals in RC model aircraft or use the top of a plastic egg to neatly conceal the electronics on the hub.
For less than the ultimate, simple chaser light circuits with no IR link should be straightforward and a bit more exciting than just rings of light. I'd recommend using the miniature lights and paint connections for these too though. This will be more adaptable to smaller fans I would think.
anyway, that's my ideas for a truly awesome LED fan mod, hope it is useful to other people, I'd really love to do it someday. Thing is, my mods tend to look a bit ghetto, aimed at function rather than form, so I don't know if I'll ever have a nice enough case to show this off to full advantage. I figure some of you guys might run with it and make a really nice centerpiece for a custom case out of it or something.
regards,
Road Warrior