***Working Man's DIY Dedicated Home Theater*** - Page 12

Hi JPA,

I ordered the PID and thermocouple yesterday. It has two "alarm" functions im hoping to use one to turn on fan and other to activate a buzzer if the temp overheats in the event of equipment failure.

Ill have to play with it some to see how it works once i get it.

Hey, question: Someone posted in your thread you could slow the panasonic fan to 1/2 speed with the middle setting of a fan controller, do you know if it would be ok to use the lowest setting of the fan controller?

The ball is finally rolling on hush box and rack venting.  I got waaaay too much of a mess to post any photos yet, but so far project looking good.

 

One mystery photo, can you guess what this is?

 

Haha, Nope.  That reminds me I need to check my headlight fluid! 

Nope, but it does kinda look like it.

Hint:  Its part of the hush box.

One quick cell phone pic, AngryHT guessed it.....



Back side of wall:

I finished running the ductwork for the hushbox today and specd out the ducting for the rack. The ducting worked out pretty well and simpler than i thought it would be......

Now i need to run the ducts for the rack and play with the PID controller to see how it works. Once i got a grip on that ill order the fans and hook it all up.

Sorry about the crappy iphone pics:





Here is a shot of the duct and conduit running to hush box:



While i was up there working i wanted to reposition my subs, move and re-angle the mains so I took a quick shot with the "Hood Popped"

I also repositioned seating.

Bad part: Now i gotta recalibrate and EQ the subs over......

HI JPA,

 

I think a PID controller would work well for you.  I have done some reading on the fans and I'm not very optimistic about slowing down the fan very much.  The Panasonic fans are capacitor fans so if the fan speed drops below 2/3-3/4 speed the cap starts firing trying to "restart" the fan(According to my reading). 

 

I've pretty much decided to go with two 240cfm panasonic fans with a PID controller, relay board, thermocouple, and 24V buzzer each.  I can configure the PID controller to turn the fan on at temp 1 and if the temp exceeds temp 2 the buzzer will come on to alert me if there is an equipment failure like a fan, relay, or other failure.  I'm still working out whether I want the relays in the rack with the controller or mounted remote with the fans but I'm leaning toward mounting the relays with the controllers and having the switched 120V run from rack to fans in attic.

 

I spent last night playing with the PID and trying to decipher the broken English manual that came with the controller and getting the alarm functions to work for my situation proper.  The PID controllers have a lot of features which are not applicable in this application so you have to turn off all the real PID features and setup the rest of the settings.  This is VERY IMPORTANT read the PID controller Model numbers very carefully.  The model numbers determine whether the controller is just a relay or actually outputs DC current or both.  I almost screwed up but was lucky and what I got works fine for me.

 

Let me know when you have a plan and your objectives and I'll help what I can.

 

Nicholas.

I ordered the thermocouples, controller, relay board, and buzzers to put this all together, and since i know what picture whores we are.......

 

Controller:

 

 

Relay board:

 

 

Buzzers:

 

Thermocouple:

 

 

 

AFAIK, the controller will not control the speed proper.  It will control something like a heating mantle where lots of on/off pulses and cycles help maintain a setpoint, but I'm not aware of any way to vary voltage or resistance with the PID controller.

 

Now, my plan was/is to use a ceiling fan controller inline with the power wire and adjust the speed that way if needs be. 

 

If you needed variable speed and were creative you could do a variable speed setup with a controller with more alarms and some more relays.  You would just need to wire up two power supplys per fan, one with a ceiling fan controller in-line, one without and have the controller switch over to the higher speed power drop(or bypass the ceiling fan controller) when it exceeds the second setopoint.......  My controller only has one alarm.  It outputs one source of 24V DC when I exceed Setpoint #1  I have that DC current looped back through the relay portion of the controller which opens when Setpoint #2 is exceeded.  Setpoint #1 controls the fan Setpoint #2 actuates the buzzer/alarm.

Thats the way I envisioned it too, with proportional control.  There may be controllers out there that can perform this, but mine will not.

 

The controllers were like $23 each on ebay, the thermocouples were $10 each, the relay board was $10, and the buzzers were $2 for two.

 

Total $46+$20+$10+$2= $78 for Control setup.  Fans are gonna be like $300. 

 

You can quickly see how fast this adds up.  The Thermal management products would have been double this, but would have been turn key and a little more polished.  I prob would have used a commercial offering(fan solution) If I felt they would have worked but I'm pumping this air 15-25' to dump in another part of house and just didn't feel those offerings had enough CFM.

 

In other news the new seating position is working well.  I was able to make some improvements with mid-bass response by moving them forward 2ft.  I also moved the mains closer to front wall and blocked their ports.  The ports were rear-firing and I didn't need all that port energy bouncing off front wall and contaminating the my response.  It worked well.

Haha, saw this and just had to share.....

 

Order Fans   - Check.

 

Qty of (2)  FV-20NLF1

 

 

 

 

Woot!  I'm sure I'll be waiting a bit on the relays and thermocouples as theyre coming from China but that will give me time to finish running the ductwork for the rack.....

Boring UPDATE:

Running ductwork currently into attic and punching holes in sheetrock. Not a fun project but im looking forward to a cooler/quieter theater.

Both controllers are received.

Relay board, alarms, and long thermocouple will be another week or two.

Both fans will be here Monday-Tuesday.

Currently repurposing an old VCR chassis into the control box to hold the controllers, relays and alarms. This will go into rack and look like a component.

Need to cut holes into rack for intake and exhaust which will create an enormous amount of dust, not looking forward to that! Then just hook up ducts which are ran and hookup power from controller box once its done.

Simple. :-S

I didn't take any pics of the gutting process.

 

I'll shoot some of the actual re-purposing, just re-used the power cord and case but that saved me some bucks and hopefully the end result is pretty polished.