Product Information > Ghurd's product support

My Changing Dump Rate on Ghurd Controller

<< < (3/3)

ghurd:
The standard Yellow LED resistor is 3.3K.
The Yellow LED typically uses about 3.3ma, though it varies a bit depending on the LED and specific purpose of the controller (ie: LVD).

R4 = 130 ohm
R5 = 8.2K typical, could be vary widely depending on the application.

Never had any noise issues before. 
110' is a long ways.
I have no clue what radar would do to it.

Ross,
Is high HZ noise like that visible to the human eye?
I do not understand how it could oscillate slow enough to be detectable by eye.

Woof,
After trying it with the long wires disconnected, and if that solves the issue,
Might try connecting the remote Yellow LED in parallel with one fet's resistors, and a 100nF cap too.  It couldn't hurt.

G-

rossw:

--- Quote from: ghurd on January 24, 2012, 11:28:29 pm ---Never had any noise issues before. 
110' is a long ways.
I have no clue what radar would do to it.

Ross,
Is high HZ noise like that visible to the human eye?
I do not understand how it could oscillate slow enough to be detectable by eye.

--- End quote ---

Just hypothesising for a moment, if there is "some sort of" signal that is far too high frequency for the eye to see, it could be inducing just enough bias (remember, we've got a LED - so a diode junction), that any stray 50/60Hz mains signal could be superimposed on it as well.

That could (I suppose, theoretically), modulate the FET at 50Hz.

ghurd:
(60Hz in Wooferville)

Something unusual is going on there.
It's intentionally not common to get more than maybe 10 or 15Hz, though it does "adjust itself" as required.

Unusually high frequency is almost always due to connecting the controller wires, and the load wires, to the same wires.  Resulting in oscillation.
G-

WooferHound:
All versions of the Ghurd controller that I've made have been able to flash so fast as to appear to be steady on. My Hysteresis is set to .01 volt as per Ghurds original recommendation years ago. Way back when I had a single stage dump controller, I hooked some headphones up to the LED output so I could try and determine the dump frequency by listening to the clicks. I do Live Sound and I can tell you the frequency by listening. What I was hearing was a 50hz tone.

I positively have 2 separate wires working the unit, one set for Dump power and the other set for battery voltage sensing.

RossW
Well, the long LED wire is running right next to a 120v 60hz power feed. It is possible that the 50 & 60 hz frequencies are beating together to give me some 2 second variations in Dump Frequency
Thinking about that again, It happens at lower dump rates too. even 2 dump pulses every second will alternate between fast and slow every 2 seconds or so.

I will not have enough Sun to cause it to dump for about 5 days, so I will try disconnecting the long LED wires whenever that happens to try and trouble shoot this nonproblem.

WooferHound:
- Update -
OK the Sun has finally come out for a few days and and it took a while to charge the batteries enough to start dumping. I have been watching the 2 dump indicator LEDs and everything seems to be working perfectly. The temperature has dropped considerably and that May be effecting the operation a bit. Both dump stages are working simultaneously right now and it is very regular timing.

I have decided to rewire my Dump Controller a little bit and hook the LEDs on the long wires onto the Dump Resisters themselfs.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page