hawaiian breeze fan

[kaboom]

Re: hawaiian breeze fan

If it's anything like this electronic air cleaner I fixed-

Five leads from the motor, one for each speed plus common to neutral.
Those are triacs on that board, one for each speed.

This appears to be doing the same as that EAC, right down to the confused micro.

In my case, the resonator checked out, the caps in the 'power supply' were replaced, even another 5V supply was substituted. Never got anything other than a fan twitch. The lights would pulse brightly during the twitch, then stay dim for 20 seconds. There was an LCD that never displayed anything. It had its own chip and got data from the micro.

I ripped all that junk out and put in a rotary switch for the fan, and two toggle switches- one for main power and the other for the ionizer. I think someone 'charged up' after removing/replacing the collection cell and 'discharged' into the circuit board when using the control panel.

Ah, yes. One of those cheap capacitive voltage divider supplies. See my diagram.

[Agent24]

Re: hawaiian breeze fan

I bet they didn't even need to use a microcontroller, probably the only reason they do is so they can write code which randomly erases itself, forcing you to buy another one.

[Mad_Professor]

Re: hawaiian breeze fan

I put the new resonator in, it still doing the same thing.

Oh well I tried.

Question:... Can LED in series cause this kind of problem?

[Agent24]

Re: hawaiian breeze fan

Could use it for parts... those micro button switches are useful, here Jaycar charges $2.50 each..

[PCBONEZ]

Re: hawaiian breeze fan

Get rid of the controller and mod it for switches.

[b700029]

Re: hawaiian breeze fan

Or if you're feeling adventurous, program a PIC or AVR to replace the existing micro, and then you can get the fan to do things it originally didn't --- all those LEDs could make for a nice lightshow

[Agent24]

Re: hawaiian breeze fan

Hey that's a good idea.. yeah you should do that! Shouldn't be too hard...

[xyzzy]

Re: hawaiian breeze fan

Maybe too late to help this case, but I recently fixed a similar problem on a Honeywell HFY-045-THA Tower fan. The 5v rail is derived the same way through a 1.0μF X2 uTx brand direct from the hot lead through a dropper to a 5.1v zener. Selecting 'ON' would briefly blip the fan, then nothing.
Turned out the derived supply was not "stiff" - the load of driving a couple of triacs and led indicator collapsed the supply and caused the MPU to reset. This happened fast enough, the LCD display remained blank.
The culprit was the X2 cap - no external signs of stress, but the nominal value had dropped to ~0.17μF. Enough for a sniff of 5v, but not under load.
I'm curious about the failure mode - no leakage under test, no external signs. Maybe the endplate bonding failed partially to the layers? Its potted, so further examination difficult. The circuit drags current thru as short pulses on the crest of negative going cycles, maybe not what an X2 expects...

Cheers

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: hawaiian breeze fan

Nah, the answer is that they simply cheaped out on the cap and it didn't have a high enough current rating. I've even seen those caps cracked in half in those cheap flashlights that recharge from the mains using a similar scheme.

[kc8adu]

Re: hawaiian breeze fan

does your 5v stay steady?
would not be the first time i have seen that cap die in a setup like that.
as for the flashlight a neighbor has one from the 50's made like that.a cap,string of diodes for the drop,and a sealed lead acid cell.crude but effective.adding 1 diode gave just enough to charge 2 aa nimh.no cheap zeners back then i guess.

[kc8adu]

Re: hawaiian breeze fan

program it to tap out "i am a pile of shit" in morse when it is running?

Or if you're feeling adventurous, program a PIC or AVR to replace the existing micro, and then you can get the fan to do things it originally didn't --- all those LEDs could make for a nice lightshow

[Toasty]

Re: hawaiian breeze fan