mab1 said  

Hi Mike,
Regarding the chinese board: apologies, I didn't mean to add to your workload - for the small price of another board i may as well just get one, and when i eventually look at it i can post here for feasability and advice (unless you really want to do it of course   ).

I will not promise anything but I am curious to see what might be required to make it work with a Nano controller.

Re postage to UK I will check into it and the customs forms etc required & cost.

There are other solutions available which I will discuss with you via email or PMs.

I am curious, what do you expect postage cost to UK would/might be - a rough guess is fine, it just helps clarify what method we might use.

Not sure if there are any MPPT controllers kicking around - lets see if anyone offers up a couple.  Maybe Poida has some spare.....

Thank you for the variac explanation Mike, I do have a variac here (the transformer variety) but was not sure what you meant with that word in regard to the control card.

Now, I do like to copy your ideas (I hope you don't mind) and when I saw your interesting use of a 'current type voltage transformer' for sensing the AC mains voltage I thought I'll have to try this.

So I laid out a control PCB with this instead of the original LT1638 that Poida used.
But I'm curious if this will work with the original Nano program?
I'm using your early version of the MC74AC86 gate drive BTW.

I'm not interested in many of the features your latest control card offers (have external fan temperature controllers and no need for automatic start up or a status display monitor.

I finished the PCB layout but have not sent it for manufacturing yet until I know if my original Nano works with your AC sensing or if I require a different program.

Thanks

Klaus you are welcome to email me a copy of your schematic so I can comment - in short I believe it should work with normal Nano code.

Thanks Mike, email sent to m...s@a...m.com.au
I hope this is still correct