Digital Potentiometer or switch for fans and such

[isaacmacdonald]

I have lots of fans in my case. I also have potentiometers (fan mate) and switches in my case, and mounted in various places. The thing is, it's a PITA to get everything right, and it's an ugly solution.

What kind of cheap, computer controlled switches/potentiometers are out there? Is there anything simple, that won't require me to write crap in machine language? I know I can buy pretty mechanical switches and whatnot, but I'd really prefer something computer controlled that is scriptable.

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I originally posted this in general hardware, but no one had any answers...

 

[Lynx516]

DigiDocs are scriptable but only turn them on and off. As my A level project here in England I am going to build my own Digidoc type of thing but wiht 4 levels of fan control and a nice big fat LCD but it does require machine code to write the prog for the CPU I am using for it

 

[blahblah99]

Look at MAXIM-IC for some fan speed controllers.

 

[isaacmacdonald]

Ok, I spoke with a friend of mine and he suggested that one other possibility would be to run it off the PC speaker line. I'm not sure if he meant running a switch/potentiometer off the PC speaker, or actually using the power to run a fan (though I assume the pc speaker can't being putting out much wattage). Any ideas as far as that goes?

 

[arcas]

Hmm. Perhaps he's suggesting to use the PC speaker line to act as a sort of cheap pulse-wave modulator (ie. send a square wave to the "PC speaker"; vary the wavelength to control the on-off fan pulse duration using a transistor). That's an interesting idea. Never thought of doing that.

 

[Lynx516]

Unless you want to blow your sound card I wouldnt do that. So what exactly do you want? A microporssecor controlled stand alone system or one connected to your PC?