Reef Angel Forum

do you have a link to the driver you used?

These "Chinese Black Box" lights have the drivers built in.
Here are pictures of one that went bad in mine and the seller replaced.




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So if the drivers are built in how do you connect it to the reef angel?

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You have to modify the lights.
It's in the OP or read this thread.
http://wamas.org/forums/topic/58230-int ... /?p=504763

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cmc0619 wrote:Does the other side have a couple of locking ridges in it? I bought https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/ ... -ND/683353 & https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/ ... -ND/527370 for my chinese light boxes and they're a perfect fit. https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/ ... ND/1651047 for the mating connector.

I got these today and they are the perfect fit.
I hope to have time to wire it up this weekend.
Thanks cmc0619

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Glad to hear it! Hopefully you have the right crimper. Apparently these need an XH sized crimper and I bought a KF2510 crimper which is for the longer inserts. So I ended up smashing about 5 of their ends before I figured that out... :/

I don't have to crimp anything. I got the female ones that are meant to go thru a circuit board.


I'm just going to solder my wires running to the dimming module to the pins sticking out of the bottom of the connector.
Then plug the wire going to the driver into that and connect it to the dimming channels.

Sacohen wrote:Thanks. I think these are the same thing.
http://m.ebay.com/itm/80pcs-XH2-54-4P-C ... ING_ACTIVE

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Are these the ones that worked well for you? Mine have been fine just shoved in, but I would be much happier knowing they had a proper connection. If these work well I will get some.

Ted

They fit perfectly.
I wired them up this week end.

I just haven't connected them to the lights and dimming module.

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So I had a fun and successful night tonight and wanted to share it in case someone else had the same idea. I wanted my lights to be dimmable by either the pot or the reef angel. By day I'm a network engineer and we have these things called RJ-48X jacks which are basically a regular 8 pin network jack with a shorting bar in the back to link the pins of 1 & 4 and 5 & 8 together when unplugged. I figured I could use this to make an auto detecting dimmer jack. I put it all together tonight and it worked. I guess it's true that a broke clock is right twice a day.

The concept it the 12V- is always connected to both the pot and the RJ-45 jack. But the 12V+, which completes the circuit, is switched by plugging and unplugging the RJ-45 cable. So unplugged it uses the Pot, plugged in it uses the Reef Angel (Apex too, as I made the jack compatible with their spec)

Here's my bill of materials:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003AU6JBG - Dual RJ-48X, pull the jack and wire leads out and toss the body.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00WO4SKF2 - premade wires

Pin 1 - 12V+ on potentiometer board
Pin 2 - Cut
Pin 3 - Double wire(leads to Pot board & driver (use cradle pins on bottom)) to 12V-
Pin 4 - 12V+ lead from driver (again, use cradle bottom pins)

Repeat for pins 5-8 to other driver
Pin 5 - 12V+ on potentiometer board
Pin 6 - Cut
Pin 7 - Double wire(leads to Pot board & driver (use cradle pins on bottom)) to 12V-
Pin 8 - 12V+ lead from driver (use cradle)

Cradle unused pins are On/Off
Two choices
Choice 1. Hot wire them together like you see in all the forums
Choice 2. Run them back to the Pot board.

Choice 1 = Outlet controlled (Basically always on unless AC is cut like from a RA relay box)
Choice 2 = Potentiometer controlled (this works even when under RJ-45 control for On/Off, have to turn it off until it clicks)


And here are the pictures of the rats nest:
http://imgur.com/a/yWlZL

Hopefully there isn't some hidden gotcha where I'm feeding voltage/current/idk back into something I shouldn't be but so far I haven't let the smoke out of the box!

How has the longevity been for your modification? any issues?

No issues so far.

anyone know how many lights could one run with a standard reef angel plus? assuming PVM lights and RA.

time to clean my lights and I think I should mod them while I have them apart (I have 3 on a 6' tank).

thanks for the help!

You should be able to dim 3-4 drivers off one dimming port IIRC

That's awesome, I'll get after it this weekend.

Got my SB ReefLights all modded up. I used a stereo headphone jack placed in one of the dimmer pot holes and made a wiring harness using a 4 pin circuit board connector so it's all just plug in with no cutting into the original wiring. Works great. My only gripe is that these drivers don't dim to off so it took a little bit of coding and 2 ports on my relay box to get it to work properly.

Nice work.

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cosmith71 wrote:Got my SB ReefLights all modded up. I used a stereo headphone jack placed in one of the dimmer pot holes and made a wiring harness using a 4 pin circuit board connector so it's all just plug in with no cutting into the original wiring. Works great. My only gripe is that these drivers don't dim to off so it took a little bit of coding and 2 ports on my relay box to get it to work properly.

20160521_062028(1).jpg

Very interesting. I'm about to attempt this with my 2 Marsaqua (almost identical).

Would you have any videos/pictures, tips on how to go about it ? I'd rather not cut into it if possible and definitely like your idea. Any thoughts on where/what to get in terms of exact parts ?

Thanks!

http://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-100645- ... ge_o01_s00

http://www.amazon.com/uxcell-Plastic-St ... ge_o01_s00


http://www.ebay.com/itm/301822047360?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT

I cut the stereo cable in half to make two cables. Bare ends to the dimming module. I removed one of the dimmer knobs and put the stereo jack in its place and then soldered up a harness with some hookup wire and the 3 pin connectors. I did zero cutting to the case or original wiring.

--Colin

Troylong45 is also selling kits for this. I think he was working with roberto to get them in the store too

Random thought (and probably stupidly obvious) - I'm about to butcher my Marsaqua and realised I couldn't find any easy way to control (dim) my lights software wise (android app or portal). Have I missed something ? I used the Parabola setting in the Wizard, offseted the times for Daylight and actinic, picked start end % but.. from there on, is there a way to actually control and dim the lights ?

From what I see it looks like I'd need to re-write the code should I want to change the current intensity ? I see that from the portal it is possible to play with a Jebao in realtime for example, changing its setting and intensity so it must be possible to send values to the memory for the daylight and actinic variable ? I must be missing something..

If you're just looking to set them to a particular value, the Android app is the best way. Just long press on the value and it'll pull up an override slider.

cosmith71 wrote:If you're just looking to set them to a particular value, the Android app is the best way. Just long press on the value and it'll pull up an override slider.

that's exactly it! awesome, thanks.

Seems like a fairly common feature that is well hidden Not that it is super useful but still fun

So I've managed to make the dimmer work with the standard PWM (Analog in this case) channels on the RA and as expected, analog doesn't dim to 0% but that's find. What bugs me however is the high pitch whine sound that seems to be heard only at low %, I don't recall hearing that before. In fact, oddly enough, it seems like the fans are actually ramping up and down following the % dim while they were always running 100% regardless before the mod when using the pot.

Any thoughts ?

cosmith71 wrote:http://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-100645- ... ge_o01_s00

http://www.amazon.com/uxcell-Plastic-St ... ge_o01_s00


http://www.ebay.com/itm/301822047360?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT

I cut the stereo cable in half to make two cables. Bare ends to the dimming module. I removed one of the dimmer knobs and put the stereo jack in its place and then soldered up a harness with some hookup wire and the 3 pin connectors. I did zero cutting to the case or original wiring.

--Colin

I have the requisite connectors and was about to wire up the adapter but wanted to make sure all that was needed was the 0-10v and ground connections on the 3 pin header.

Edit: disregard; tested it out and it works Only issue I have is the 3.5mm jacks I purchased are significantly smaller than the holes for the manual dimmers. Not sure if I'm going to drill another hole or use a washer yet.

Washer is nice and simple.