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I have a circuit already built. A 3-wire fan which a wire is connected to 12V, a wire is ground, and a wire is connected to a pin of an AVR microcontroller. How can I drive this fan and control its speed?

On the fan is written Brushless DC fan and it is like PC fan.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ At any point did you think to google "3 wire fan control" \$\endgroup\$
    – user103993
    Dec 2, 2016 at 8:23

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Since you did not identify the fan in question, we will assume that it is a typical 3-wire example. One wire (typically black) is circuit ground. One wire (typically red) is the +12V power to the motor, and the third wire (perhaps yellow?) is likely the tachometer feedback from the fan. Your controller can monitor the speed of the fan using the pulses from the tachometer feedback signal from the fan. And your controller can change the speed of the fan by pulse-width modulating the power it is sending into the fan.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ the wires are red, black and blue. \$\endgroup\$
    – pix
    Dec 2, 2016 at 4:40
  • \$\begingroup\$ The period of the PWM is important? \$\endgroup\$
    – pix
    Dec 2, 2016 at 4:42
  • \$\begingroup\$ What did you discover when you Googled for the technical information? You will get demerits here if you make no effort to do your own research before asking here. Did you attempt to search for the answer before coming here. This seems like a quite common question. \$\endgroup\$ Dec 2, 2016 at 4:43

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