Someone with electronic circuit exp care to step inside

[AquaJohn]

Im trying to boost the output of my reefkeeper light modual to power 8 meanwell dimmers. The reefkeeper only puts out enough to power 2-3. I found this diagram on Digital Aqautics site and I want to make sure I understand it correctly before I blow up mu controller lol.

the chip is a lm324

So the question is if I read this right and I dont know anything about it.

Im going to jump pins

1 and 2 to the + side of a meanwell

6 and 7 to the next meanwell

8 and 9 to 3rd meanwell

13 and 14 to the 4th meanwell

then join pins 3,5,10,12 to the + side of the reefkeeper

then add a 12vdc power + to pin 4

Tie all the - from the reefkeeper meanwells to the 11 pin on the chip

I am not using the pot or the toggles for manual mode that was something the original poster wanted but I do not need.

Does that look right. it just seems kind of strange to tie pins <1,2> <6,7> <8,9> <13,14> together

I assume I can just solder wires to the pins of the chip or should I use a bread board >

thanks for the help

[Timfish]

It looks to me that pins 2, 7, 9 and 14 are reference inputs each amp uses to maintain a constant output. I'm assuming they won't work without those pins hooked to something and the output is close (the chips spec sheet should say). If the dimmers were physically quite a distance you could run a reference wire back from the dimmer to the amp reference input and it would try to adjust the output so the dimmer saw the correct voltage. Unless you actually measured a voltage drop between the amp and the dimmer I would hook it up exactly like the diagram shows. Assuming you don't need a heat sink you could solder it up without using a breadboard.

[innate1]

Tim you amaze me! Getting into electronics at this level is awesome. You should do a meeting at sometime to show us noobs some basics.

[AquaJohn]

ya each of the pins 2,7,9,14 will be going to a meanwell dimmer I just did not understand why it looks like pins 1,6,8,13 look like they are "spliced" into the 2,7,9,14 is that what the line with the blue dot means ? or is it saying that 1,6,8,13 are telling the 2,7,9,14 what to do ?

[AquaJohn]

http://www.datasheet...-datasheet.html

that is the data sheet its the second one down on the list.

Edited November 17, 2011 by AquaJohn

[AquaJohn]

From my understanding this will give me 4 40Ma channles one for each of 4 Meanwell dimmers and the reefkeeper light modual has 2 channles so if I make 2 of the gizmo's I should be able to power 8 meanwells at 40 Ma each.

[AquaJohn]

and thanks for stepping in

[AquaJohn]

so if I were to build it and wanted to test it without the reefkeeper could I use a 9v battery im place of the reefkeeper ? the refkeepers output is variable from 0-10v

[Timfish]

Tim you amaze me! Getting into electronics at this level is awesome. You should do a meeting at sometime to show us noobs some basics.

Thank you! That's a good idea, I'll talk to Dave Pattet. My favorite way to test for AC is to lick my finger and . . .

[Timfish]

so if I were to build it and wanted to test it without the reefkeeper could I use a 9v battery im place of the reefkeeper ? the refkeepers output is variable from 0-10v

Pins 1, 7, 8, 14 are the outputs of each amp. After looking at the data sheet and the diagram the negative inputs 2, 6, 9 and 13 need to be tied to the outputs to get the correct voltage out for this application (it could be different for other applications). Yeah you should be able to test it with a 9 volt battery. I don't see a problem with hooking up a couple of these to your Reefkeeeper controller but you should also be able to hook one of these to the reefkeeper and then then to four more of the LM 324 quad amps to let you run 16 dimmers. Then you could get fancy and figure out a seperate circuit for each dimmer that generates a sine wave several minutes or hours long and have different lights dimming or brightening simulating clouds floating by. But that's a little over the top for me

[AquaJohn]

Thanks man one more thing does the +12vdc connect to pin 4 and the - of the 12vd hook to pin 11 along with all the other -terminals from everything else ? Im heading to Radio Shack and gona give it a shot. I think i will see if they have a breadboard that fits that chip and go from there.

The reefkeeper light modual has 2 channles so I am going to put one on each and then run my 4 white dimmers on one and the 4 blue dimmers on the other. That should give me full and serperate dimming of each color.

[Timfish]

Yes, pin 4 is your + 12 vdc input and pin 11 is the common ground or -12 vdc input.