RGB Fan Project

MrColdHollow · October 22, 2019

Hey everyone new here and wanted to run an idea by some people here who might be able to help :D if this is not in the right spot please let me know!

I want to take 4+ rgb fans and attach them to something like a piece of plywood and independently control each fan. If possible with an app. My daughters love my PC fans and how they light up and I want to make something fun for them. If anyone has ideas please feel free to toss them out at me. I am thinking fan because I would get the ones where the blades light up as well.

Hackentosher · October 22, 2019

This sounds like a fun project, but I don't know how hackable these fans are. Most, like the ones from corsair, have addressable leds within them. That's fine and in a lot of cases ideal, but it makes controlling the leds quite a bit more complicated. If you can find a tear down of one of the rgb fans on the market, this can tell us some very important information. If each led in the fan is controlable via a serial data connection, such as every hobbyist's favorite Ws2812b LED.

The next question is where does that serial/control signal come from? In a hobbyist project, these leds would most likely be connected in a continuous strip. If the leds are connected like this directly to the controller, that's super convenient and you can hopefully implement some microcontroller and the fast led or neopixel library to control. Alternatively, the controller could treat each fan as it's own strip of leds. Either way, the controller is talking directly to the fan leds.

The other way I could see them being controlled is if each fan has its own microcontroller to handle the luminescent choreography. Then the main controller would talk to the fan microcontroller and give it some instructions. The fan microcontroller would then execute those instructions. I don't think I would do it this way if I was in charge of the electrical team for corsair, Thermaltake, or whoever, because it's more complicated and expensive, but that's another way you could do it.

I would hope it's the former control method as that would make hacking a control system for rgb fans much easier. I hope you can find some teardowns or schematics for some rgb fans as that would tell us a lot.

Alternatively, you could tape the stock rgb controller to the back of your plywood. Or even more jank, you could buy some clear fans and wrap the edges with rgb strips.