Brad | March 17, 2019

Not working properly

I have been unable to get this board working properly in either PWM or voltage mode. I've tried various PWM frequencies with no change. Seems to go from off to barely on, then full power. Maybe not detecting 50hz AC properly? Will try to adjust the provided ATTiny code when I find a programmer and see if I can get it working.

Response from RF Simplicity | April 10, 2019

Hi Brad,

I'd love to hear if you got this straightened out. I'm willing to work with you to find a solution.

Cheers.

William | Sept. 5, 2018

Well designed product that meets its main use case

Well built product that works exactly as described on simple loads such as lights and is likely to work on any load proven to be compatible with this type of pwm.

I did not have success with my single phase large induction motor (1.5kw) pumping water at low speeds but that was 100% down to the induction motor which is specifically designed to work on a full sine wave @50Hz. I achieved some power control in a small range near full power though.

Very happy with my purchase.

Response from RF Simplicity | Sept. 6, 2018

Thanks William!

Sean | Aug. 28, 2018

Probably my fault for not checking first...

Three years later finally getting around to using it, but the active range of PWM makes it useless for what I wanted to do. In "voltage" mode it will pulse the motor noticeably while PWM just does nothing for me--likely related to using a 3.3V micro and not trying to do voltage translation. But not much point if I'm only going to get the same range out of this that I get from a cheap controller from Amazon.

Response from RF Simplicity | Sept. 6, 2018

Thank you for the honest review. I've made a change to the PWM detection function to allow for a wider range of frequencies and works at 3.3V. Some motors are okay with a chopped wave, but others need a VFD.

Daniel | Sept. 29, 2017

Really nice

Work at is supposed to. very nice little board and we use it to change speed of an AC motor in both 110-120v AC and 220-240v AC. It works fine and does exactly what we were looking for.

Thank you!

Daniel, automation electrical engineer.

Response from RF Simplicity | Oct. 3, 2017

Thanks Daniel!

Miguel | June 28, 2017

Denver | Sept. 21, 2016

we can not figure out analog mode from the instructions

If anyone has gotten this unit to work in analog voltage control mode can you please tell us exactly which pins on the 6 pin header to connect.
we have the AC input and AC Load and the 5 volt control signal landed fine... but it is completely unclear how to set up the 6 pin header from the instructions. EXACTLY which pins are tied together. WE ARE NOT USING THE PWM mode

Response from RF Simplicity | Sept. 22, 2016

For everyone's convenience, I have uploaded two more photos to the product page to show exactly which pins need to be connected for both Analog and for PWM operation of the board. I hope this helps! Cheers!

Lewis | July 3, 2016

Awesome little dimmer control board

Had a little trouble with shipping but I won't put the blame on Thewp122. Once I contacted Thewp122 I was immediately sent another board at no extra cost to me. Great product and awesome person to work with!

Response from RF Simplicity | July 6, 2016

Thanks Lewis!

James | April 22, 2016

Morten | Jan. 26, 2016

Edward | Jan. 17, 2016

Jeff | March 10, 2015

Works as advertised, would benefit most from additional docs

When I decided to replace/redesign a light alarm I made in 2008, I bought this board rather than designing my own phase-control dimmer board. So far I've been chasing more problems in my software than in this board.

The general design of the zero-cross input and the triac output seem broadly similar to this schematic, though not all details are the same: http://playground.arduino.cc/main/ACPhaseControl

The details about how to control the board seem a little bit sparse. Here are some notes, based on driving a "rev 1.3" board with a Raspberry PI 2:
* I used a 5V supply and 3.3V IOs, which works fine
* The "PWM" control mode is based on measuring the *length* of the pulses rather than the duty cycle (arduino pulseIn). The documented "5%-40%" figure is appropriate for an Arduino with a 490Hz PWM (http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/analogWrite)I used a 1kHz PWM, which caused the effective range to be about 10% to 80% instead. This also seems to cause the light to turn off with a "100%" input, which I think is also a limitation of pulseIn. So I think the PWM input might better be described as 100-800us "high" time plus a minimum "low" time (200us is adequate, less is probably OK). (this bullet point updated after receiving Arduino source for the board's firmware).
* I drove the "mode" pin from another GPIO. That GPIO floats until my application on the PI is totally initialized. (I don't have a good reason for this, it's just how it turned out) To avoid turning on the light at this point because of a voltage seen on the (undriven) CTRL input pin, I tied CTRL to GND. (I see now that the product page suggests a 65k resistor here)
* Incandescent and halogen bulbs still dim better than any of the CFs or LEDs I tested
* On request, the seller supplied me with the source in .ino (arduino) format and the schematic. I haven't yet built it or flashed the device, but I may—I intend to find out whether serial or spi input is feasible.
* The LED has 3 states: off (no AC commanded), bright (100% AC commanded, or no AC zero-cross detected) and dim (somewhere in between).

Some suggestions for a future revision of the board would be:
* rotate the opto chips 90 degrees, so that they straddle the dashed line that implies isolation of the low-voltage pins and traces from the high-voltage side.
* if possible with your fab, use an internal slot under the optos to improve isolation
* document the permissible range of PWM frequencies
* Consider including an RC network (possibly jumpered?) at the CTRL input pin so that PWM can be applied at CTRL, and document the minimum PWM frequency to avoid eccessive ripple
* Or at least add a pull-down at the CTRL input pin so "no analog input" leaves the lamp off
* provide an accurate rating for permissible current through the triac Q1 (250W halogen led to an unreasonbly hot heatsink but no apparent damage)
* A fuse or PTC would be another great addition in case of mishap. I need to add an inline fuse to my setup.

Response from RF Simplicity | April 5, 2015

Thanks for the review Jeff, I agree with all of the suggestions. I will implement these with the next revision.