zebulon

Yeah...we can probably update that contribution to a newer set of boards Greg......that one's a little dated now....

I'll throw an extra set in the box I'm sending down Brad. I should have it together and on its way by the end of the week.

Looking at the pics again, that resistor behind the fuse on the board looks to be burned up, so does the one across from it (R13 and R30). Might want to look at replacing them and possibly Q1 (the transistor between them).

You definitely need a 1A fuse, the maximum I would push it is 1.5A

If it pops a 1A fuse I would say there is an issue further along in the circuit (look for split, burnt or swelled capacitors).

Go ahead and hook up the knocker boogies, it should be fine. If there are any problems, let me know.

Gotcha, 4 leds to a set.

The booster only uses the 5v and 12v to power the board circuitry, no bank power necessary.

Just an FYI on the voltage banks on the ledwiz itself, they only provide a path for the clamping diodes in the event of feedback from a coil to protect the driver chips on the board.

There's no real gain by connecting those banks if all that is connected is leds as the leds are diodes and provide the same protection themselves. It doesn't hurt anything to connect them, but there's no real reason to.

4xRGB Leds are 12 ports. That only leaves 4 ports. Yes you can still use the remaining outputs on the ledwiz. I'd make sure to supply the 5v rail on the ledwiz though, just to avoid pulling too many amps through the usb port.

You'll be fine with that.

You can safely run 3A per channel boogies, and I have unofficially run one to 6a with no heating of the Mosfet or magic smoke on the traces (chickened out beyond that), but officially, 3a. In 5w cree terms that's 3 crees inputs per output.

No problem jadflat. Dont hesitate to post any questions you have either on this thread or via PM to me.

'So if a plane left Seattle carrying 500 lbs of melons, and a train left Toronto (Canwegia) carrying 500lbs of beaver pelts and each was travelling 120mph, >>>>>how soon would the martians take over the earth?

The driver board has 595 based multiplexer's built onto it. It's designed to expand the number of outputs from the arduino using serial output.

The ledwiz has no way to address the bits in the multiplexer's, therefore it wouldn't pass the signals properly.

Put me down for one of the LedWiz Booster boards and pm me the shipping details. That should take care of the relays and such.

Congrats to you and your team on solving the stuttering issue Pixel, looks amazing and runs very smoothly!!!! Awesome work.

Lol....had to take the shot......

The diodes are built into the ic, but you're right, better to be safe than sorry.

That's really awesome...looks great!!!

But someone has to say it....."Rock me Amadeus"???????....really???....

Seriously, you've done wonders with this idea.

Its a problem with driving an inductive load with a solid state device. From what I have read, some of the Dual H bridges have 'flyback' diodes built in but I could not find anything in the data sheet from the ones we are getting from Wolfsoft to say they had the diodes.

Worse thing is the more I read about it, the more its saying we should be using a fast recovery diode like a IN5416 rather than a IN4007....

Correct me if I'm wrong but the wolfsoft bridges are the robotshop (DFI) bridges.

If so, don't stress about it....here's the info you need on these bridges...... http://www.robotshop.com/ca/dfrobot-4-8-46v-2a-dual-motor-controller-2.html

High speed recovery diode is built in.

The L298n chip on the board: http://en.pudn.com/downloads182/doc/detail849113_en.html

I have a ledwiz at the moment also, so the option is there, it's your to choose.

I have no shaker at the moment, but given that the Arduino can do PWM and driver the driver board i think it could just work fine without the Dual bridge,

You can buy the exact bridge module that everyone is using as a shield for the arduino for around $10.00 online, or with Pixel's board, you just hook up to an output and run the code.

Your a solder demon

Shifters

That he is....

At a prolonged burn-in, yeah, the Mosfets have enough heat that they could do with a heatsink, but that's at 10A continuous. Below that is fine. To his credit, Pixel has stated that his PCB design was not done with 16A continuous load in mind, just the ability to achieve it in pulses, and to that I would definitely agree.

I can't really test at 16A as my household circuit is rated for 15A and the power supply I use will trip the breaker long before it reaches a sustained 16A load on conversion.

I can attest to the fact that the circuit works awesomely, and that it can readily replace any relay board out there that you might want to use. PWM control of the circuit works seamlessly as well.

Tried it with 10A, runs it but needs heatsinks (of which there is no space for) but it's happy at 5A all day long

I'm pretty sure that's the part that is under development by Pixelmagic at the moment.

Nice work, good to see that it works

It's a good design, and yeah, the leds need to be installed backwards to the layout.....

If you incorporated the opto circuit I sent you, ppl could hook it to the ledwiz and replace their mechanical relay boards for faster switching with no operational noise.

Finished the assembly...this is more fun than a barrel of monkeys...(sorry chris)

Nothing fancy but it works.

Ok, got the go-ahead from BBB, and made a blog posting about it on my blog (http://blog.pixelmagic.nl/2011/12/arduino-driver-board.html)

Basicly i can supply the PCB for € 15, with all parts for € 50 and ready made and checked for € 75.

More details on the blog posting.

Well worth the money, be sure to buy 1/4 watt resistors as the board won't support 1/2 watt. Unless you plan on running your washing machine with your arduino, chances are slim that you will need the 16A version, 3A should be more than enough, 5A if you're looking for headroom.