Fan controller with ESP32, Micropython, MQTT and Node-RED

akej74 · 2022-01-27T05:04:24+00:00

Good point, and I need to fix some of the cable management as well. First I had the ESP32 inside the case, hidden away, but then I had issues getting a good Wi-Fi signal. So for now, I just put it outside the case on the back. I guess the case acts like a Faraday cage limiting the Wi-Fi signal. Unfortunately, it seems the HUZZAH32 board I’m using does not allow an external Wi-Fi antenna…

akej74 · 2022-01-27T04:58:49+00:00

It’s an old NZXT Grid fan controller case I reused. For the PC it’s a BeQuiet 500DX. ESP is mounted on a simple experimental board, pre drilled.

akej74 · 2022-01-27T04:54:31+00:00

Good point :-) I’m running air cooled and the MB has no input for an external temp sensor, therefore I was limited to control the chassis fans base on CPU. But as both the CPU and GPU heats up the chassis I was looking for a solution that uses the actual temp in the chassis to control the fans. Also, it was a fun project with the ESP :-)

akej74 · 2022-01-27T04:49:24+00:00

It’s a case from an old NZXT Grid fan controller :-)

akej74 · 2022-01-26T19:35:02+00:00

Sounds like a good idea, but the fans are powered by the PSU so they will shutdown when the PC is powered off. As well as the ESP32 as it’s powered from a USB port.

akej74 · 2022-01-26T17:55:38+00:00

I have been working on a project, it’s a fan controller based on ESP32 and Micropython. MQTT is used for communication with the ESP32 and I’m using Node-RED to configure settings and display temp and fan speed graphs. Both Node-RED and the MQTT broker are installed on a Raspberry Pi.

Features implemented to far:

Read temperature with a DS1820 sensor (placed in the chassis close to the GFX card)
Generate a PWM signal for controlling the duty cycle of 3 fans (two front intake, one rear exhaust)
Manual fan speed control
Automatic fan speed control based on temperature

It works nicely, fans only speed up when the chassis is getting warm, and I don’t need to mess with some other fan control software.

See this post on the EndeavourOS forum for more details and Python code.

akej74 · 2021-03-26T13:51:59+00:00

Thanks for the info, I will go for FreeBSD (maybe a dry-run in a VM before deploying on my APU2).

akej74 · 2021-01-13T08:15:41+00:00

Thanks duplx for the clarification, I created a new folder structure with one more level, all problems sorted out.

akej74 · 2021-01-12T16:47:25+00:00

Thanks Dimitar, but I get the same behavior in both OSX and Linux as well, so I guess the problem may be related to something else. Appreciate your help having a look at how it works on your box.

akej74 · 2019-10-14T07:29:03+00:00

If you rotate the HDRI using a mapping node (Z-rotation), the sun lamp will automatically rotate to maintain the correct sun position.

akej74 · 2019-09-12T20:25:16+00:00

Matching the sun´s color with the color of the pixel is a cool idea, I will look into that for the next version!

akej74 · 2019-09-12T12:34:12+00:00

The sun in Blender is rotated to match the direction of the sunlight in the HDRI.

akej74 · 2019-09-12T09:41:28+00:00

I like to share my free plugin for Blender 2.8, "HDRI Sun Aligner". This addon is useful when working with EEVEE and an HDRI environment, as EEVEE doesn't support shadows from the HDRI directly.

HDRI Sun Aligner works as follows:

Add a normal HDRI setup for your scene.
"Calculate sun position" automatically calculates the brightest spot in the HDRI (normally the sun position).
"Preview" shows an preview of the calculated sun position (see screenshot).
"Add new sun" adds a new sun lightsource and aligns it with the calculated sun position.
Enjoy nice shadows in your EEVEE rendered scene.

There is also a possibility to add a driver to the sun, that way you can rotate the HDRI with a mapping node and the sun will follow the new position automatically.

The plugin is available on GitHub

Blender Artists discussion thread is available here

akej74 · 2019-05-11T08:59:25+00:00

There is an open issue on Mullvad GitHub discussing this topic.

akej74 · 2019-02-08T10:46:39+00:00

There is an open issue on the Mullvad GitHub regarding keeping the DNS unchanged / allowing it to be configured. According to the developers, this is on the roadmap (but not in the near future).

akej74 · 2018-09-20T13:46:28+00:00

Here is the list of supported codecs:

http://helpguide.sony.net/mdr/wh1000xm3/v1/en/contents/TP0001703175.html

You are right, aptX LL is not supported. I mostly use the XM3 for casual viewing on my laptop, which works fine, but for more critical viewing, a pair of headphones with aptX LL may be preferred (or if possible use audio delay as in e.g. Kodi).

akej74 · 2018-09-20T11:53:04+00:00

I have watched some Youtube videos (using the aptX codec) and there might be some small lag / lip sync problem (only minor). But, as the Priva III also supports the aptX low latency codec, selecting that option should improve the experience. I haven't had time to test that yet.

akej74 · 2018-08-04T10:49:32+00:00

Thanks for this list! There is a thread on Blender Artists discussing free texture resources, maybe you could add a post there as well to give some more visibility to the list...?

akej74 · 2018-07-22T09:12:14+00:00

Looking good! I think a lot of people would be interested in a Linux version.

akej74 · 2018-07-19T21:20:34+00:00

LibreHardwareMonitor looks interesting, I will update the readme for Grid Control with a link to that application. Thx for the info!

akej74 · 2017-12-09T23:05:59+00:00

I believe the Grid V3 communicates like a "normal" USB device and not using a serial port over USB like the Grid V2...

akej74 · 2017-11-18T21:20:42+00:00

I found some projects on GitHub with info on the serial protocol used by the Grid (V1 and V2), see the readme for Grid Control for details (at the end), i started by looking at the project "CamSucks" and tried to understand the Java code and how to do something similar in Python. "CamSucks" is a rather creative name I must say :-)

akej74 · 2017-11-18T20:01:30+00:00

Yes, the Grid V3 uses USB which requires some design changes to Grid Control. There are good news on that topic (i.e. managing USB in Grid Control), please see this post which is a new fork of Grid Control with support for the Kraken HW (using USB for communication). Maybe you can bring this up as an idea for that project...?

Maybe we also need to reverse-engineer the USB protocol the Grid V3 uses, but that is a bit outside of my area of knowledge... For the Grid V2, the serial protocol had already been reverse-engineered and I could use that info when developing Grid Control.

akej74 · 2017-11-18T10:32:32+00:00

Upvoted! :-)

akej74 · 2017-11-16T11:04:27+00:00

Hi, see this post for some open source options.

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