Brushless PWM cooling fans

[holyford86]

So with me being a bit of a nerd, I stumbled upon the fact these types of fans exist and many people have kind of hacked them to make them kinda work on older stuff. This interests me because it gets rid of one of the greatest annoyances I have with traditional electric fans, the noise... It appears that you can somewhat easily make them ramp up as tempurature increases and hold that rpm if the temp remains constant (ex: 20% duty cycle at 195 degrees, 100% at 220) it appears that you can make an arduino control this type of setup without much work (if you code, I don't, haha). From the reading I've done it appears that the Bosch fans are somewhat common and easily accessible in the junkyard near me, and controlling them is something somewhat simple. What I havent seen yet is anyone integrating this sort of thing in such a way to use the factory coolant temp sensor as a reference to the arduino, which should be possible in theory.
Has anyone else dabbled in this sort of thing? Any good resources for this? I have stumbled upon a good forum post talking about this stuff but it seems to be mostly centered around gm and holley efi (with some microsquirt thrown in)

 

[Uncle Gump]

I really haven't looked to deep into this.

But I feel like I saw an offering from Dakota Digital.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

I’m following this…

Having a fan that ramps up and down and a controller that you could program for a cool-down period would be deluxe.

 

[holyford86]

I’m following this…

Having a fan that ramps up and down and a controller that you could program for a cool-down period would be deluxe.

Yes, there are off the shelf solutions but they don't integrate well, and they would effectively be a piggyback using temp sensors and other things of questionable quality. Using an off the shelf $13 Arduino Nano, some discrete components along with some code to interface the fan to the factory ECM seems like a viable and reliable solution. Buy a couple of the controllers and dump the code onto both for a spare and swap it out if necessary. It appears that the controllers can be had in a version that runs on 5v and the power consumption is stupid low, so you could tear apart an old USB phone charger and use it as a power supply (or possibly use the 5v VREF signal output by EEC-IV or EEC-V) to power it

 

[Li'l Work Truck]

It looks like you could safely do that without a problem, as the voltage on the sensor should be around 5v max, and a drop in voltage means the engine is colder. I think an Arduino may be overkill here though, as you're essentially building a software-controlled, metered switch, but I can't find much on the ESP32 fan control without it referencing the Arduino...

Either way there appear to be kits available on AliExpress.

 

[PetroleumJunkie412]

Yes, there are off the shelf solutions but they don't integrate well, and they would effectively be a piggyback using temp sensors and other things of questionable quality. Using an off the shelf $13 Arduino Nano, some discrete components along with some code to interface the fan to the factory ECM seems like a viable and reliable solution. Buy a couple of the controllers and dump the code onto both for a spare and swap it out if necessary. It appears that the controllers can be had in a version that runs on 5v and the power consumption is stupid low, so you could tear apart an old USB phone charger and use it as a power supply (or possibly use the 5v VREF signal output by EEC-IV or EEC-V) to power it

Arduino is crazy easy to program. The Simon monk books will have you fluent upon completion.

 

[Curious Hound]

Sounds like something fun to play with.

 

[PetroleumJunkie412]

Sounds like something fun to play with.

Once you get used to them, you'll have an order or two in a year with adafruit... then you'll get started with raspberry pi, and next thing you know, you're in a pitched firefight with your toaster and coffee pot because they became sentient and decided the meatbag they live with has got to go.

Technology is fun.

 

[Curious Hound]

Once you get used to them, you'll have an order or two in a year with adafruit... then you'll get started with raspberry pi, and next thing you know, you're in a pitched firefight with your toaster and coffee pot because they became sentient and decided the meatbag they live with has got to go.

Technology is fun.

I have a box full of old Arduinos and stuff from Adafruit. All that stuff is on the back burner. I even have an old Beagle Bone.

 

[Uncle Gump]