Led configuration question(s)

[EvilNuff]

I have a few questions about led configurations using Mala.  I have, in fact, searched here and the Mala wiki but I am having trouble distilling information out of such a varied set of input data.  Any help is appreciated.

What I want is to illuminate controls used by a game when the game is launched (possibly at select time in mala but at launch time is sufficient for me).  No attract mode needed, no color changes needed, etc.

I believe that there are at least 3 different hardware options I can use to drive the led's.  Led-wiz from GGG, PacDrive from ultimarc and "Mala hardware"?  My undestanding is pacdrive will support 16 leds at a constant intensity, led-wiz supports 32 unique outputs and variable intensity.  Both appear to be fine for my needs would be my guess?  With led-wiz having more future expandability at a higher cost?

It looks like pacdrive is natively supported by Mala and there is an led-wiz plugin at malafe.net...so again I assume either would do what I want?

I see many folks using ledblinky...but I'm not really able to determine what it does that isn't already accounted for with plugins?  It can do voice description of controls, which I do not need (but is pretty cool heh).  I am guessing that for my needs, I do not need ledblinky, is this accurate?

Any help clarifying the various options out there is appreciated!

[loadman]

Sounds like a PacDrive is all you need 

You can get it working petty fast to do what you want.

You can start using it with MaLa natively then later if you want to expand with more leds you can buy another PacDrive (with separate id). Total 32

If you want it to be more clever (like do stuff while mame is running) then later use with with LedBlinky Plugin instead ;-)

[EvilNuff]

Will led-wiz work the same as pac drive in this context if I choose to go that route?

[loadman]

Will led-wiz work the same as pac drive in this context if I choose to go that route?

Yep, You will need to use a plugin though.

[EvilNuff]

Awesome...thank you much for the help.