What are your requirements for the finished product?
Do you need it to dim the lights, or just blink them on and off?
Do you need switches or sliders for each lamp? Each color?
Does it need to sync to music on its own sometimes? All the time?
Can you get us a picture of the board in each 'cluster' that takes the signal from this board and switches the mains voltage?
I hope I'm not getting too close to the prohibition on telling people how to wire things up here... and I'm providing this whole discussion for the academic interest of it... as I make clear at the end of the post... but... the part of this system closest to the lights may be salvageable. Presumably there are triacs or SCRs on the boards we haven't seen yet(We can tell you more if we see those boards), which have an opto-isolator which is being fed a low voltage signal from the second board's octal latches. From here (though no guarantees stated or implied) it looks like the white wires to each 'cluster' are carrying a common which could be either ground or +v to the triac board, and then the other colors are each carrying the on or off state of a single channel. If the unseen boards are what I'm hypothesizing, then a button or switch box (or a new custom microcontroller project) that can send ground and +5v or so down the appropriate lines could turn these lights on and off.
So with a 5v power supply and a bunch of switches, you could get the lights ON at least. You'd have to experiment to determine whether the common should be ground and then each channel needs +V, or whether the common is +V and each channel needs connected to ground to turn on.
This sort of simple system will NOT allow for dimming control. If you try to ramp up and down the low voltage, you'll just find that at some voltage the triac kicks on and then won't turn off until it goes back down below a certain point. Dimming this system would require a microcontroller that can synchronize control pulses with the mains voltage, and would require you to modify equipment directly connected to mains voltage, which I don't recommend. Everything I've suggested here requires you to touch nothing more than 5V.
If you're programming your own microcontroller (or want to figure out how to connect the stuff directly to a PC... perhaps via parallel port) you could possibly keep the second board with the latches and just replace the first board with a new project for handling data input and spitting out data to the latches.
But all of that discussion should be taken as academic about how it works and what is possible. In the end... if I were in your position, as a (presumably) paid contractor involved here, I'd tell them that it's unsafe, unreliable and potentially illegal and that you can't touch it until it's inspected by a licensed electrician because then you're as liable as whoever installed it. Then I'd go on to explain exactly what the benefits of a new system are to them - "Not only is it safer and more reliable, but you'll be able to control the lights in each area so you can use just the blue lights on the stage when the band is getting ready, then fade down the lights over the tables and bring up the lights over the stage..." etc. Put it to them in terms they'll understand and help them see why they WANT newer stuff. 4 channel, 600 watt shoebox packs can be had for $50ish... throw in a $50 enttec openusb interface and a spare computer that is laying in the back room and you've got a safe and modern system... not ideal, but not going to kill anyone.
If the boards that are taking the low level signal and switching AC are homebrew and enclosed in similar ways, they're definitely not up to code, especially for permanent install in a public club. If there's a club fire and people die... and that homebrew system is found after the fact... and you were the professional lighting consultant who didn't tell them that it had to come out... but instead fixed it up so they could keep kinda using it... you could be criminally negligent if not guilty of a negligent homicide... You were the last expert to inspect it and by NOT forcing the issue or quitting and notifying the proper inspection authority... you've effectively signed off on the system yourself. Liability is something we all have to think about all of the time.
Anyway. Let us know what you wind up doing... or if you find out more about the system!
Art Whaley
Art Whaley Design
Do you need it to dim the lights, or just blink them on and off?
Do you need switches or sliders for each lamp? Each color?
Does it need to sync to music on its own sometimes? All the time?
Can you get us a picture of the board in each 'cluster' that takes the signal from this board and switches the mains voltage?
I hope I'm not getting too close to the prohibition on telling people how to wire things up here... and I'm providing this whole discussion for the academic interest of it... as I make clear at the end of the post... but... the part of this system closest to the lights may be salvageable. Presumably there are triacs or SCRs on the boards we haven't seen yet(We can tell you more if we see those boards), which have an opto-isolator which is being fed a low voltage signal from the second board's octal latches. From here (though no guarantees stated or implied) it looks like the white wires to each 'cluster' are carrying a common which could be either ground or +v to the triac board, and then the other colors are each carrying the on or off state of a single channel. If the unseen boards are what I'm hypothesizing, then a button or switch box (or a new custom microcontroller project) that can send ground and +5v or so down the appropriate lines could turn these lights on and off.
So with a 5v power supply and a bunch of switches, you could get the lights ON at least. You'd have to experiment to determine whether the common should be ground and then each channel needs +V, or whether the common is +V and each channel needs connected to ground to turn on.
This sort of simple system will NOT allow for dimming control. If you try to ramp up and down the low voltage, you'll just find that at some voltage the triac kicks on and then won't turn off until it goes back down below a certain point. Dimming this system would require a microcontroller that can synchronize control pulses with the mains voltage, and would require you to modify equipment directly connected to mains voltage, which I don't recommend. Everything I've suggested here requires you to touch nothing more than 5V.
If you're programming your own microcontroller (or want to figure out how to connect the stuff directly to a PC... perhaps via parallel port) you could possibly keep the second board with the latches and just replace the first board with a new project for handling data input and spitting out data to the latches.
But all of that discussion should be taken as academic about how it works and what is possible. In the end... if I were in your position, as a (presumably) paid contractor involved here, I'd tell them that it's unsafe, unreliable and potentially illegal and that you can't touch it until it's inspected by a licensed electrician because then you're as liable as whoever installed it. Then I'd go on to explain exactly what the benefits of a new system are to them - "Not only is it safer and more reliable, but you'll be able to control the lights in each area so you can use just the blue lights on the stage when the band is getting ready, then fade down the lights over the tables and bring up the lights over the stage..." etc. Put it to them in terms they'll understand and help them see why they WANT newer stuff. 4 channel, 600 watt shoebox packs can be had for $50ish... throw in a $50 enttec openusb interface and a spare computer that is laying in the back room and you've got a safe and modern system... not ideal, but not going to kill anyone.
If the boards that are taking the low level signal and switching AC are homebrew and enclosed in similar ways, they're definitely not up to code, especially for permanent install in a public club. If there's a club fire and people die... and that homebrew system is found after the fact... and you were the professional lighting consultant who didn't tell them that it had to come out... but instead fixed it up so they could keep kinda using it... you could be criminally negligent if not guilty of a negligent homicide... You were the last expert to inspect it and by NOT forcing the issue or quitting and notifying the proper inspection authority... you've effectively signed off on the system yourself. Liability is something we all have to think about all of the time.
Anyway. Let us know what you wind up doing... or if you find out more about the system!
Art Whaley
Art Whaley Design
