RGBW+Strobe / 6 Channel DMX Controller

Steve22537

Steve22537

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Joined
Dec 13, 2010
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258
Location
Harrisdale, WA
I'm in the process of developing a RGBW+Strobe / 6 Channel DMX Controller with P-DMX. The original concept was based on the JEC and WJohn designs.

The idea was to have a small device that could be attached to each Mini Tree that supported DMX and had minimal cabling, hence a single CAT5 cable can be run between each tree suppling power and data. The Mini Trees have 5 different coloured strings, each being 5m long and 5 ACL Strobes.

The device can be mounted in a 82 x 54mm Jiffy Case, and has the option to enable / disable P-DMX and allow the user to configure it as a RGBW+Strobe Controller or 6 Channel Controller with the addition of a few components. The device has Power In / Out so the Power can be daisy chained between devices if the user doesn't want to use P-DMX. It has been designed to run at +24v and is internally fused to protect the cabling and other devices down the line. The final design still needs a little bit of tinkering but its not that far away and final costings haven't been finalised. Part of the design scope was to make it so that the components could be sourced from your local Jaycar or Altronics at minimal cost.


There are a few changes to the board layout and the circuit layout that still need to be done, but this is the start.

EDIT: The PCB has had a few minor changes.
 

Attachments

  • RGBW+STROBE - 6 Channel Controller Circuit.pdf
    250 KB · Views: 33
  • RGBW + Strobe Controller PCB.jpg
    RGBW + Strobe Controller PCB.jpg
    177.5 KB · Views: 64
Looking great Steve, now for the firmware. I look forward to seeing this project develop.
What would be the approximate price for a board and parts?
What is the rating of the outputs?
 
The design cost was between $A15.00 and $A25.00 depending where components are sourced.

I have code provided by JEC which may need a little tinkering with. The outputs have been changed from the original code to allow simpler design of the PCB.

The final output loads will be confirmed once a board has been built and fully loaded as the weak link in the chain is the size of the tracks on the circuit board. With the present design the unit with cope with a total load of 2A @ +24v. In the process of tidying up the board I will try to increase some the track widths.

Open to ideas and recommendations.
 
already having mini trees in my display I really like your idea and look forward to its development.
 
Nice Design I will probably need some for my RGBW Mini's I just built

Wombat
 
I notice that your have your voltage on pins 4 and 5, and 7 and 8. (3 and 6 are unused)

Because there are some/many people using LOR boards, if they accidentally plug your CAT5 cable into those boards, it will likely fry their RS485 chips (on lines 4 and 5). The D-Light boards also use 4 and 5, and possibly Renard.

Is there a reason you couldn't use 3 and 6 instead?
 
LOR and a couple of others use a weird wiring assignment. The one Steve has used is actually based on the ESTA standard.
 
Thanks for your input JonB256,

That was one of the design considerations I have allowed for, unfortunately the schematic drawing doesn't reflect the changes made just yet, but if you look at the PCB Layout you will see that I have included a fuse between the Power Input connector and the RJ45, this is to be removed if power is not wanted on the RJ45 so minimising the chances of damage.

Hope that helps.

Steve
 
I have just updated the board layout (First Post) to utilise the Dinkle style connectors and shuffled a few components around to make the board a little more compact.

Steve
 
Final changes to schematic and board layout have now been posted. Next is to take it into the real world.

Steve
 
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