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goaliebob99  
#1 Posted : Thursday, April 8, 2021 8:49:24 AM(UTC)
goaliebob99

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Does anyone have a diagram of how to make this work?

I'm making a version of a poor man's tally with Arduino. From what I gather each LED is based upon the Arduino's digital pinout. IE: pin 2 is tally 1 preview, pin 3 is tally 1 on-air, pin 4 is tally 2 preview and pin 5 is tally 2 on-air, etc through pins 13.

I'm assuming that I need to provide separate power to power the LED light strips (red and black two-wire) At each camera location I have a little box that I made that has two lights, one red (on-air) and one LED Green light strip (Preview)Both lights are wired into an XLR jack.

On the XLR jack pin's 1 is Ground for both lights (Black), and pin 2 is for preview (red hot), pin3 is for On-Air (red hot wire)

this makes it easy to install the lights at each camera position with a simple XLR connection at each camera position.

At the Vmix PC side, I have a total of 6 XLR connections, Pin 1 on all of them is grounded to each other, pin two and three goes to the Arduino for its light. An example is on XLR for camera 1, pin one is ground, two is preview, three is on air for the on-air led.

What I am assuming is I need to somehow need to get power to the lights so the correct voltage can be applied to them as the Arduino cant drive the 12 volts needed for the LED lights and I need to put a MOSFET transistor in place. I'm new to electrical engineering, how do I make this happen?

Does anyone have a diagram or a better way of doing this? Any help would be appreciated, and I'm not afraid of using a soldering iron as well! :)
Babbit  
#2 Posted : Thursday, April 8, 2021 9:30:04 AM(UTC)
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Depending on the Arduino model, you can run at 12 volts, but watch to make sure you're not drawing more than 20 mA per I/O pin or the max the model allows. If you're interested in dimming the strips by way of PWM, make sure you have enough pins that support it (i.e. the Uno Rev3 only has 6 I/O pins with PWM).

If you can meet those limitations, it's then a matter of using the I/O pins as your positive and then tying all the grounds together with the Arduino.

EDIT: There's a regulator, so the I/O pins output 5V no matter what. No 12 volt output.

Otherwise, you'll have a lot of external components. I prefer to use solid state relays (mechanical relays make clicking noises) because it's simpler to wrap my brain around and in this case the Arduino stays isolated from your external power. With SSRs, you're lighting up a tiny LED inside that activates a photo-sensitive diode to perform the switch. Use the Arduino I/O to light up that SSR LEDs (don't forget the current-limiting resistor or you'll pop the LED!), and then use the switching side to complete the circuit with your external power to the appropriate LED strip color.

One other thing to keep in mind: you will experience some voltage drop depending on the length of your cabling and the gauge of the wire. With tally solutions I've done in some installs, I've used a 12 volt power supply back at my rack, and then had a 5 volt linear regulator near my LED strip, which also ran at 5 volts. Even if my run made the 12 volts sag to 8 volts, the regulator would knock it down to 5 volts. You may do fine without any of this, but it's something to keep in mind.

I had an Arduino laying around when started looking into tallying solutions. Ultimately I would up going with Guidogast's M5StickC wireless tally. I'm up for a challenge, but it wound up being more cost effective for me.
spino  
#3 Posted : Thursday, April 8, 2021 6:17:41 PM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: goaliebob99 Go to Quoted Post
Does anyone have a diagram of how to make this work?

I'm making a version of a poor man's tally with Arduino. From what I gather each LED is based upon the Arduino's digital pinout. IE: pin 2 is tally 1 preview, pin 3 is tally 1 on-air, pin 4 is tally 2 preview and pin 5 is tally 2 on-air, etc through pins 13.

I'm assuming that I need to provide separate power to power the LED light strips (red and black two-wire) At each camera location I have a little box that I made that has two lights, one red (on-air) and one LED Green light strip (Preview)Both lights are wired into an XLR jack.

On the XLR jack pin's 1 is Ground for both lights (Black), and pin 2 is for preview (red hot), pin3 is for On-Air (red hot wire)

this makes it easy to install the lights at each camera position with a simple XLR connection at each camera position.

At the Vmix PC side, I have a total of 6 XLR connections, Pin 1 on all of them is grounded to each other, pin two and three goes to the Arduino for its light. An example is on XLR for camera 1, pin one is ground, two is preview, three is on air for the on-air led.

What I am assuming is I need to somehow need to get power to the lights so the correct voltage can be applied to them as the Arduino cant drive the 12 volts needed for the LED lights and I need to put a MOSFET transistor in place. I'm new to electrical engineering, how do I make this happen?

Does anyone have a diagram or a better way of doing this? Any help would be appreciated, and I'm not afraid of using a soldering iron as well! :)



Reynolds  
#4 Posted : Thursday, April 29, 2021 5:42:12 PM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: Babbit Go to Quoted Post
Depending on the Arduino model, you can run at 12 volts, but watch to make sure you're not drawing more than 20 mA per I/O pin or the max the model allows. If you're interested in dimming the strips by way of PWM, make sure you have enough pins that support it (i.e. the Uno Rev3 only has 6 I/O pins with PWM).

If you can meet those limitations, it's then a matter of using the I/O pins as your positive and then tying all the grounds together with the Arduino.

EDIT: There's a regulator, so the I/O pins output 5V no matter what. No 12 volt output.

Otherwise, you'll have a lot of external components. I prefer to use solid state relays (mechanical relays make clicking noises) because it's simpler to wrap my brain around and in this case the Arduino stays isolated from your external power. With SSRs, you're lighting up a tiny LED inside that activates a photo-sensitive diode to perform the switch. Use the Arduino I/O to light up that SSR LEDs (don't forget the current-limiting resistor or you'll pop the LED!), and then use the switching side to complete the circuit with your external power to the appropriate LED strip color.

One other thing to keep in mind: you will experience some voltage drop depending on the length of your cabling and the gauge of the wire. With tally solutions I've done in some installs, I've used a 12 volt power supply back at my rack, and then had a 5 volt linear regulator near my LED strip, which also ran at 5 volts. Even if my run made the 12 volts sag to 8 volts, the regulator would knock it down to 5 volts. You may do fine without any of this, but it's something to keep in mind.

I had an Arduino laying around when started looking into tallying solutions. Ultimately I would up going with Guidogast's M5StickC wireless tally. I'm up for a challenge, but it wound up being more cost effective for me.


Thanks for the update and quick reply. I'll be sure to keep an eye on this thread. Looking for the same issue. Bumped into your thread. Thanks for creating it. Looking forward for solution.


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guidogast  
#5 Posted : Saturday, May 1, 2021 1:31:57 AM(UTC)
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Would this be a solution for you? https://forums.vmix.com/...C--ESP32-Board--for-vMix
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