Producing Changing Colors in PC Fan

Overview

The project illustrates how a PC fan is used to create color changes using 4 bright LEDs mounted in corners.

Details

An RGB LED control built around an AVR microcontroller comprise the whole fan speed controller included in the project. The microcontroller is responsible for communicating with the PC program, controlling LED fading, and monitoring fan RPM. The PC program communicates with simple graphical interface in order to easily adjust the fan speed while the RGB intensities of each LED with sliders can be manually selected. The 4 LEDs are taking their source voltage from the power input of the fan. The LEDs will get dim if a fan controller is used to slow the fan.

The fan has to be modified to have RGB LED in it and be sure that the fan spins without the LEDs. For installing the RGB LEDs in the fan, the LED wires should be angled so that the cable coming off the LED is going towards the motor wire. A breadboard test can be done before putting things in the PCB. The MAX232 should be hooked to a serial port and the TX/RX pins of microcontroller.