Interested in Apex/RK controlled d120's?

[MJNTWise]

Ok I was reading the post wrong....So now I have the wires connected correctly. Now I have a DA lite with a ACL and have it hooked up but its acting strange. With ACL work the way we need it too?

[MJNTWise]

Im guessing that this set up will not work with Digital Aquatics...for the life of me I cant get it set up to turn off...lol

[banditpowdercoat]

Hi all, new here, not that new to Reefing.  150g for 4 years now, and a few 45g for a few more.  

 

I'm wanting to ditch my DIY LED's for these D120's  Planning 3 on my tank.  Now I'm sure the Apex would be fine with 1 light, 1 channel per VDM channel,  but 3 lights, I'm not so confidant.  I cant have my Apex fry as I work in camp 3 weeks at a time and no one would be able to figure it out or repower my tank untill I return.

 

SOOO, to my question.  I am planning to run a OP Amp per channel on the lights.  And incorperate a pot for setting that channel Max brightness, yet keep the Apex program 0-100% for dimming.  I have sketched what I think should work.  Been about 20 years since I played with Op Amps so wanted someone to check it over.  Plan on mounting the Op amp in the light housing.  WOuld I be able to run power from one of the drivers or should I add a separate 10V supply to power the OP?

 

 

[Origami]

Hi all, new here, not that new to Reefing.  150g for 4 years now, and a few 45g for a few more.  

 

I'm wanting to ditch my DIY LED's for these D120's  Planning 3 on my tank.  Now I'm sure the Apex would be fine with 1 light, 1 channel per VDM channel,  but 3 lights, I'm not so confidant.  I cant have my Apex fry as I work in camp 3 weeks at a time and no one would be able to figure it out or repower my tank untill I return.

 

SOOO, to my question.  I am planning to run a OP Amp per channel on the lights.  And incorperate a pot for setting that channel Max brightness, yet keep the Apex program 0-100% for dimming.  I have sketched what I think should work.  Been about 20 years since I played with Op Amps so wanted someone to check it over.  Plan on mounting the Op amp in the light housing.  WOuld I be able to run power from one of the drivers or should I add a separate 10V supply to power the OP?

You've got a simple unity gain op amp configured there. One observation: You're tying together the low side of your low voltage dc source with the Apex VDM- output rather than isolating the two. This may or may not be reasonable. You can't be sure if you won't have current flowing between the apex and this other ground reference, or line noise from a cheap transformer. This may have unintended consequences. Not guaranteed, but possible. Thus, it may be better to use an isolation amplifier rather than a regular op amp. An optical isolation amplifier might work well here.

[banditpowdercoat]

Well I have a bunch of 741 Op amps.  How would one do it if not tying the negatives of both supplies together?  How is the Op Amp input to be negative referenced on the Op Amp?  + signal goes to the Normal input, where would the - Apex line go?

[Origami]

Well I have a bunch of 741 Op amps.  How would one do it if not tying the negatives of both supplies together?  How is the Op Amp input to be negative referenced on the Op Amp?  + signal goes to the Normal input, where would the - Apex line go?

That's where the opto isolation comes in. It looks at the current on the input side, converts it to optical energy and converts that back to electrical energy on the secondary side. It's a transformer of sorts that will work with DC or pulsed DC (as well as AC).

 

There's nothing that says that you can't tie all of the negatives together like this to bring them into line, but you don't know for sure if the failure to isolate one system from the other is going to present a problem for one of the devices. If you want to give it a try, the 741 is a decent enough amp for the experiment.

[scott711]

any update on this?

[AlanM]

I gave up.  I was curious to see what I could do, but ultimately decided to just run it off the dimmer knobs on my refugium to grow silly amounts of algae, hair and macro.

 

Plus the batch that came in the group buy after mine had a totally different driver design which seemed to incorporate some of the trim resistors into the driver, so I wasn't able to control it the same way.  I don't know how often they change designs, but I didn't possess one of the new ones, so just decided to leave it to others.

[Rui Manuel Gaspar]

What you have pictured is the one that monkiboy got when he ordered me a few more pot boards.  It's not what mine looks like. 

 

Here are the pics of the board with the pot on my d120.

 

The back (with pot and 4 pin connector on the other side).  The labeled pin 1 and pin 2 are the vdim+ and vdim- pins.  I literally just snipped those wires and hooked them up to the two Apex wires which supply a 0-10V analog signal from their VDM module and it seemed to work fine.  I was trying to do it more complicated with a unity gain op-amp at Tom's direction to try to protect the Apex, but it probably isn't necessary.  Yours is way different if it uses PWM to dim.

 

 

Hello Alan,

 

So my two Chinese Fixtures have the exact same piece as you describe here. I have two of them!

 

Do you know if I can hook up both blues (for instance) to the same APEX port?

 

Or should I buy the aditional APEX variable Speed/Dimming module?

 

I have to control two fixtures plus two tunze pumps. If I understand correctly the main APEX unit comes with four ports. Is this correct? Is it possible?

 

And also thanks for your effort!

 

All the best,

Rui

 

[Rui Manuel Gaspar]

Hello again,

 

Here is a picture from my actual fixtures.

 

 

 

Once again thanks for your support,

Rui

[Rui Manuel Gaspar]

Hello again,

 

Another thing ...

 

When I build my DIY Led connected to Arduino I used a 10k Ohm pull down resistor to ensure the light were dimmed to 0 and also I used a 100Ohm resistor to protect the input of the arduino.

 

Can I use the same here with the VDM?

 

All the best,

Rui

[AlanM]

Hi Rui,

 

These lights dont dim to 0 with these drivers. So pull down doesnt help. Not sure if a large resistor would help protect the apex output. The apex is kind of a black box to me, and Im not clear on the current limitations on the vdm ports. I dont see why it wouldn't work to connect both channels in parallel from the apex vdm channel to dim them at similar rates. Origami posted a circuit earlier in the thread that was intended to isolate the apex from current coming from the evergrows, but I failed at getting it to work, just hooked it up to the apex, and crossed my fingers and it worked fine. Your mileage may vary. Base apex does come with 4 dimmng ports.

[Rui Manuel Gaspar]

Hi Rui,

 

These lights dont dim to 0 with these drivers. So pull down doesnt help. Not sure if a large resistor would help protect the apex output. The apex is kind of a black box to me, and Im not clear on the current limitations on the vdm ports. I dont see why it wouldn't work to connect both channels in parallel from the apex vdm channel to dim them at similar rates. Origami posted a circuit earlier in the thread that was intended to isolate the apex from current coming from the evergrows, but I failed at getting it to work, just hooked it up to the apex, and crossed my fingers and it worked fine. Your mileage may vary. Base apex does come with 4 dimmng ports.

 

Thanks Alan,

 

Perhaps in the future I would replace them by two meanwell if I manage to find the specifications on this fixtures.

I read somewhere that each VDM port would allow 250mA. I have a close friend that is very knowledgeable in electronics. I will give him a ring to see if we can put this to dim to 0

If I can hook up 2 blue channels in the same port, the 4 ports of the base APEX will suffice for now!

 

Thank you very much for your help!

 

All the best,

Rui

[Jon M Profeta]

@ALanM. I have the same fixture that you have. The d120. I am awaiting the arrival of my Da reefkeeper ALC. It has 2 separate ports of 0-10v to control the dimming. Now were you successful with shorting out pin 1&2 and hooking up Vdim+ pin 3 to + on the ALC and the Vdim- pin4 to the - on the ALC.

 

 

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[AlanM]

Yep, it worked fine, but I ended up just using this as a refugium light so I run it full blast all the time now growing piles of algae.

[Jon M Profeta]

Thanks man. This is such a great thread. So much work went into this. If I have any other questions don't worry I will ask. Starting with this. I have 2 full spectrum d120 I am just going to tie all the wires together so they work in sync. This should work with 2 drivers on each 0-10v. 2 drivers on the 1st 0-10 2 drivers on the 2nd 0-10.

 

 

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[Jon M Profeta]

O and I forgot to add. Should I disconnect the dimmer or can I just tap into the wires. I would love to be able to put it back to stock if I had to.

 

 

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[Jon M Profeta]

O and I forgot to add. Should I disconnect the dimmer or can I just tap into the wires. I would love to be able to put it back to stock if I had to.

 

Anyone know if I can do this?????

 

 

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[lnevo]

Homestly your in unchartered teritory. There has not been much followup as Alan abandoned the project and there have been very few success stories reported back to this thread. I know a few people on the ReefAngel forum who managed to get this going but even there it was only one or two people. We really need more people who may have read this thread to report back as to their levels of success. I do plan on doing the hack soon on my lights, but have been in no rush as they are the only lights I have and are still under warranty.

[AlanM]

You can disconnect the dimmer totally and just short out the on-off pins and do on/off with a power plug timer and dim with the 0-10V signal if you got a 4 pin header that matched the one on the dimmer board.  It's a standard pin spacing of 0.1 inch, I believe, so it might be really easy to find.  Or just shove wires of the right diameter into the holes on the connector.  Then you don't have to snip the wires or mess up the board.

 

Whether you mess up your controller or the drivers is a different question altogether, heh.

[Jon M Profeta]

Inevo you have the link to the reef angle forum.??? AlanM this prob what I am going to do. Just connect the two on and off together then take the dim+ and dim- and hook up to the controller. So if I leave the dimmer inline I should leave the intensity at 0 right and just never touch it.

 

 

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[David g]

 

Update: I am driving 3 Nova A8s, which would be 12 LED drivers all from 1 PWM pin on the Reef Angel Dimmer Expansion. Works fine. Some of the banks are brighter than others at low PWM signals and I think that is more to do with adjustments on each driver. Works great.

 

I've started looking at my D120. I have the same rheostat dimmer board as show by AlanM except I have two connectors on board, but only one used. Otherwise, the pot looks the same:

 

I opened up the driver, labeled as Well-LIT LT-PCB-9076C.

 

 

 

New to this but mines gone and broken itself I have the same bord as you but need to find a replacement I'm in the uk can anyone help ?

[lnevo]

So the ReefRadiance DM-155e is now apex controllable as an option. The interesting thing is they are selling a conversion kit. This unit looks just like all the other D2040 out there. Anyone think it would be pretty straight forward to use this kit on other D2040 clones?

 

http://reefradiance.com/dm-155e.html

[lnevo]

I am hoping to have some news about this kit soon. Will keep everyone posted

[AlanM]

Neat