Comments on: Hacking The Cenzic POV Fan

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:27:59 +0000

My work is now handing this out at trade shows, however at the cap, there is a small piece that removes to expose a small 5 pin port

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b109/ursusblue/IMAG0047.jpg

By: JJ

JJ — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 04:14:38 +0000

Thanks for the tutorial. It was a great starting point for hacking a similar product.

By: LED POV message fan hacking

LED POV message fan hacking — Sun, 09 May 2010 17:56:17 +0000

[...] Full story, tutorial and videos at http://hackingwithgum.com/2009/10/06/hacking-the-cenzic-pov-fan/ [...]

By: Boomer

Boomer — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:09:05 +0000

I have another chinese fan that doesn’t have the header of outside eeprom. Its a Boss/Roland one I got at the NAMM show a few years ago. has anyone made any progress with this one? I can make a scan for anyone interested. there are 15 pads on one side so guessing is going to take a loooong time. there are no unpopulated pads besides that.

I wish that epoxy-ing your ICs was illegal

By: Craig

Craig — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:41:58 +0000

Brian,

I assume that you’re running Windows, so you’ll need to download and install the Python interpreter for Windows ( http://www.activestate.com/activepython/ ). The python scripts need to be run from the command line, so open up a command prompt, cd to the directory where you saved the scripts, and run them from there. That should be all there is to it!

By: Brian

Brian — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 12:36:31 +0000

I’m getting one of those Dealextreme fans. I got a question. How am I suppose to use python? I’m new to it and was stuck in visual basic for a programming course.

By: Craig

Craig — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:10:39 +0000

Jelle,

That’s a bummer! Would it be possible to post some pictures of the DX fan PCBs? I’d be interested to have a quick look-see.

Also if you really want one, I do have an extra Cenzic fan that I could send you – if you’re interested, drop me an email (http://hackingwithgum.com/contact/).

By: Jelle

Jelle — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:25:20 +0000

I just got my fan today from DX, and unfortunately it is not quite the same. There is not header on the pcb, and no separate flash. it is unclear to me how these units are programmed; there are some blank pads on the pcb, maybe they provide the i2c interface. An alternative might be that they are programmed before the board is soldered, but that might be a problem with low volume orders.

By: Craig

Craig — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 13:18:12 +0000

Jelle,

Nice find! Those do in fact look exactly like the Cenzic fans. Cenzic actually gets the fans from a third-party supplier (http://nadel.com/); the fans are cheap, but the minimum order there is 250. I would expect that the fans from Deal Extreme come from the same supplier, and at $3.99 with free shipping, they look like a good deal!

By: Jelle

Jelle — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 07:51:13 +0000

maybe this fan will be hackable too: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.29154 ? It is not really clear if the header cover is there too, but I just hope the mechanism is the same. I’ll see, I ordered one.