Fan controller
 

I have just received a prototype fan controller that may be of interest to those of you who no longer appreciate the sound of a 747 coming from your PC. Basically, it is a single channel fan controller that uses PWM to change fan speed based upon a thermistor temperature. Good ability to adjust the settings, too.

It looks to be a good method of quieting your system down without spending your whole monthly toy budget. Look for more as testing progresses...

Link? Diagram?

This is a prototype for a product, so I will have pics, comments and other stuff galore. Right now, I need to make/get a Y-cable to plug several fans into it because I ran out at home (yes, I have too many hard drives!). This last weekend, I got blindsided by a surprise visitor: my sister-in-law. She just got out of the Navy (6-year term) and surprised us all by coming home a bit early. There was much rejoicing and visiting, but not a lot of free time for me.

However, as a teaser, look up the TL594 chip by On Semiconductor (used to be part of Motorola).

Bacl online and half done with the preview. Ran into a minor functional snag though and am waiting to hear back from Aardil.

http://www.onsemi.com/pub/Collateral/TL594-D.PDF

Will be interesting to see how it pans out. PWM is usually way more expensive than variable voltage controllers like the LM317 or LM350 but maybe not with this chip. Looks to be less than $.70 each. How the rest of the circuitry is done would go nice to see.

Well, right now, I can see that not all the bugs are worked out. However, that is what you expect from a prototype. It works with some fans but not all. What I like about it is that it shows some real promise for real customization, and yet it has the brute strength to handle lots of load. Many of the current fan controllers are nice looking but they don't support much control over what they do. Or, they are wimpy. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Aardil and his friend are working hard to iron out the bug that I've found. When that gets done, I'll post a preview talking all about the strengths and weaknesses of the product.

The first question I'd have, is how do you keep monitoring the fan speed, since PWM doesn't allow you to do that? Or is it dropped altogether?

Dropped, in this solution.

Preview finally done! It's up for the big boys to criticize before it gets posted.