This may prove tricky, but since the core use of Arduino... what about attempting RGB control of the OLD Thermaltake Riing fans?

[Electrifide]

Hey, I mentioned this over on DarthAffe's Git... (Also, I should come clean; I'm actually a degreed Electrical Engineer btw not software haha). But EE's do just as much coding anyways.

I know TT Premium is around, not sure on what their status is for an SDK.

But for those of us BLESSEDDDDD with having purchased SEVEN [7] (if you can't sense my frustration) of the old-school Thermaltake Riing fans a couple months before TT Premium became a rumor... it'd be an awesome feature to be able to convert those pesky Button-Controlled fans into imitating their newer SW-controlled "Premium" versions. Since HueHue already has Arduino as essential machinery (or at least that's the plan) to make the project work; now would seem like a perfect opportunity to use the onboard GPIO pins and a simple circuit tied/soldered into the Thermaltake control boxes, to essentially turn the manual-controlled fans into smart-RGB-controlled. It may be something as simple as soldering a jumper wire to the pushbutton on the fan controller circuit board. Then you would just have to write some routines to mimic as many RGB Effects as possible.

[BrianLima]

As far as i know, many of those fans just have an adressable led strip onto them, by looking on this teardown controlling them is as simple as hardwiring onto the arduino, so it's completely doable. It might even work actually since by using FASTLED, we can work with a wide variety of LED types.

The only minor problem right now is that HueHue can only control a single led strip per Arduino, i'm working on changing that tho and you would be able to attach up to as much led strips as there are digital ports onto a single controller, and counting that the Riing is simply a LED strip inside a fan, it will be easy to workaround.

I don't think you will need their control box at all, it will probably be easier to hook the fan directly onto the Arduino.

[Electrifide]

I've seen that forum post regarding the Riing teardown too, and that is pretty much the only way to get proper-addressable RGB LEDs into those 1st edition Riing fans. However, I know a first-hand account from a buddy I run into at my local MicroCenter who tried that (and so he could 800-grit sand the clear Polycarb ring to make it cloudier and improve the "light diffraction/scattering")... and he ended up breaking completely or negatively-affecting the operation of half of his Riings in some way. He's no noob when it comes to case modding, and his opinion was that it was more tedious and delicate than he predicted.

Both would probably work, the GPIO idea may be simpler just because it's more of a "hack" than a fine-craftsman effort. There will be more loose wires, and it wouldn't look as "finished"/"polished", and you could always desolder the GPIO mod to return it back to stock in case you wanted to sell the fans for upgrades, etc.? After poking around with my DMM just now... I drew up a very crude schematic:

[Electrifide]

I believe just a quick toggle of a GPIO from "0" to "1" when connected to the circuit trace that leads to "Via. to LED Driver IC" (IC located on the back side) will effectively simulate and operate as if S1's button was pressed... thus changing the RGB mode. I'll have to look up the datasheets for those IC's just to make sure it's designed to handle that without adding any diode or transistor.

[BrianLima]

I think that while it might be doable, it wouldn't fit very well into HueHue, because i will not be able to tell the Riing controller to do an effect i programmed, just to cycle trhu effects it already has.