#Reef-PI Aqua Knight A029 any?

[JT26]

I have been searching and haven't seen any thread regarding hacking Aqua Knight A029 into Reef-PI.

Have anyone done it or knows if its possible. I have only seen it with the Chinese blackbox and kessil light.

 

[AquaRaider44]

I have been searching and haven't seen any thread regarding hacking Aqua Knight A029 into Reef-PI.

Have anyone done it or knows if its possible. I have only seen it with the Chinese blackbox and kessil light.

Anything is possible and if you have one and are willing to test some stuff and open it up I am sure the community could help! How is the light controlled? Is there any sort of input that allows it to be controlled externally?

 

[AquaRaider44]

Also, welcome to R2R!

 

[JT26]

I'm new to community , Ty

The only control are two touch button on top that does multi functions.
I'll try to open it and get some picture, hopefully someone knows how to intercept the signal for Reef-pi to control.

BTW: I just finish loaded the Reef-pi onto pi3b+ model and able to hit the server. Hopefully to get temp, ATO and this Chinese light tie into it.

 

[AquaRaider44]

I'm new to community , Ty

The only control are two touch button on top that does multi functions.
I'll try to open it and get some picture, hopefully someone knows how to intercept the signal for Reef-pi to control.

BTW: I just finish loaded the Reef-pi onto pi3b+ model and able to hit the server. Hopefully to get temp, ATO and this Chinese light tie into it.

If you open it up and take lots of pictures there may be some way to hack it. @Michael Lane is the resident electrical hacker here and will likely have some idea.

 

[crusso1993]

I am sure you'll be able to get reef-pi controlling the light as long as it does not use old chipset tech.

Welcome to R2R!

BTW - you may want to introduce yourself in the "Meet and Greet" forum which you can find here;

https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/meet-greet-forum.129/

 

[Michael Lane]

I couldn't find any teardowns or internal pictures of the Aqua Knight lights, but I would be interested in seeing what's inside. I'm not quite sure what to expect inside since it's only driving 9 LEDs and a fan.

I'd love to get my hands on an assortment of different lights to show how they work and how to hook up to reef-pi. Post some pictures and we may be able to figure it out together. It will be helpful if you can get clear pictures of the circuit boards.

 

[JT26]

Here it is guys....

There seems to be a sealant on the IC? Whats product do I need to apply once i have remove that gray stuff, I believe this is to seals the electronics boards form the moisture since its on top of the tanks.

 

[Michael Lane]

That's interesting. I would not recommend removing the coatings. It looks like 3 discrete drivers, one for each color. They kind of look like pwm driven constant current drivers.
Does this use a DC power supply?

 

[Michael Lane]

Edited to clarify that I would NOT recommend removing the coating. It's likely to cause damage to the components beneath.

 

[Michael Lane]

I wonder if it's based on al8805, like the femtobuck.

Can you read any marking on this component?

 

[JT26]

This is the product page

http://www.hipargero.com/product/hipargero-a029-led-aquarium-light-2/

Does it look like we have any PWM board that can intercept the signal for reefpi to control?

 

[JT26]

No the coating on it is pretty thick. I try to have a light shine at it to see if it able to help but can’t recognize anything underneath.

 

[Michael Lane]

I'm pretty sure it can be controlled, but I don't think it's trivial. I'll add some details this evening.

 

[Michael Lane]

It looks like DC power comes in on the LED board and is routed to the microcontroller and fan over the ribbon cable. There's also a component labeled temp, so that signal is probably routed back to the mcu to control the fan.

The next step for this is to understand the signals going over the ribbon cable. I suspect the following signals.
- Power
- GND
- Temp signal
- PWM 1
- PWM 2
- PWM 3

I would unplug the cable from whichever side is easier (probably the LED board) and wire through a breadboard in order to measure the signals while the system is running in a few states - lights all the way off, lights on a low setting, medium setting, and as bright as it gets. At a minimum, we'll need to know the voltage on each wire for these, and it would be nice to see if the signal has a frequency. These settings should be options on almost any multimeter.

Once we know this information, we should be able to inject our own PWM signals into the light, and continue to keep Power, GND and Temp flowing to the mcu so the fan continues to operate.

 

[JT26]

Electrical like this is not my expertise any guidance on how to measure?
I do have a Digital Multimeter MSR-R5000, and susspect we want to measure the pin 1-6 to knows which is which and how much current sending though based on the stats of the lights

 

[Michael Lane]

It looks like that meter does not support measuring frequency, but that's ok. Measuring the DC voltage on each wire can help us understand how this light works. I'd set the meter to measure DC voltage up to 200V since the board documents 24v.

The first challenge is finding a ground reference. You could probably find it on one of the wires experimentally, but it would probably be easier to use the capacitor connection to ground, or remove a bit of coating from the ground power wire coming in (circled below).

The light will have to be on and functioning when you take the measurements, so you'll have to be careful not to accidentally short any of the points together.

 

[JT26]

It looks like that meter does not support measuring frequency, but that's ok. Measuring the DC voltage on each wire can help us understand how this light works. I'd set the meter to measure DC voltage up to 200V since the board documents 24v.

The first challenge is finding a ground reference. You could probably find it on one of the wires experimentally, but it would probably be easier to use the capacitor connection to ground, or remove a bit of coating from the ground power wire coming in (circled below).

The light will have to be on and functioning when you take the measurements, so you'll have to be careful not to accidentally short any of the points together.

Perfect I know where to find ground now, what about power(red) pin where do I point on the board w/the red pin? What about those jumpers with 6pin?

 

[Michael Lane]

The red pin from your meter will measure the voltages on the 6 pin jumpers. There's probably 6 small points of metal where the connector is soldered to the board. If you can poke through the coating, you may be able to measure everything without disconnecting the jumper and making temporary connections with a breadboard and jumper wires.

 

[Ranjib]

Curious if this worked out, any update ?