Happ 360 Setup with RGB Illuminated Joystick

[planbee]

Well my 2 happ 360 sticks along with the RGB illuminated balltop sticks I ordered arrived the other day, everything looking in order. Now I'm not up to wiring my control panel yet but was 'itching' to see the sticks in action so I thought I'd jimmy together something to do just that. The stick has 4 wires coming out the shaft, I assume one for r, b, and g, and the other is your common anode (+5v)? This would be where the LED-Wiz comes in? Each wire taking up one i/put on the pcb, now this is where I start to get a little confused. Basically I'm trying to re-create the UAII Quad Illuminated cab that mameroom.com offer. Now with it being 4 player and backlit, I'm guessing it's going to require at least 5 or so LED-Wiz boards, seeing as there is near 50 pushbuttons, an electric ice 2 trackball, 4, possibly 5 illuminated joysticks.... get out the old wallet!
Can someone give me a run down on the equipment needed to wire this type of control panel? I already have an IPAC4 and opti-pac, I think I just need a handful of LED-Wiz's and that's all??

Any help would be most appreciated.


Jason.

[RandyT]

Well my 2 happ 360 sticks along with the RGB illuminated balltop sticks I ordered arrived the other day, everything looking in order. Now I'm not up to wiring my control panel yet but was 'itching' to see the sticks in action so I thought I'd jimmy together something to do just that. The stick has 4 wires coming out the shaft, I assume one for r, b, and g, and the other is your common anode (+5v)? This would be where the LED-Wiz comes in? Each wire taking up one i/put on the pcb, now this is where I start to get a little confused. Basically I'm trying to re-create the UAII Quad Illuminated cab that mameroom.com offer. Now with it being 4 player and backlit, I'm guessing it's going to require at least 5 or so LED-Wiz boards, seeing as there is near 50 pushbuttons, an electric ice 2 trackball, 4, possibly 5 illuminated joysticks.... get out the old wallet!

The panel you are trying to re-create uses 5 or 6 (depending on the configuration) LED-Wiz's.  If you don't need to have every color of every button or joystick independently controlled, The LED-Wiz has the ability to drive multiple LEDs on a single output.  So, if you want to control some of the buttons in groups (say, mirror the lighting on all 4 player's buttons), you can save quite a bit on the number of outputs required.

[planbee]

That's a good point Randy. With my joysticks I'm not exactly sure how the multicolored drive works as there's not too much info out there. They're from retroarcadeslive but they're very similar to the old slikstick ones whose multicolored one had no control over the colors, so I'm not certain on what mine will do, If there's a wire for each colour and with and led-wiz shouldn't I definitely have control over the colors? I need to sort this out to determine how many led-wiz's I need really. If you group the player buttons for example, can you just use different color wire
Combos to have the different colors for players 1 - 4?
Thanks for the help.


Jason

[RandyT]

... If there's a wire for each colour and with and led-wiz shouldn't I definitely have control over the colors? I need to sort this out to determine how many led-wiz's I need really. If you group the player buttons for example, can you just use different color wire Combos to have the different colors for players 1 - 4?

If you have 4 wires from the stick, and one of them is +5v, then yes, you should have full color control.  On the buttons, If you mean to set the first three outputs as the "number 1" button for all players, and then hook player one red to output #1, player two blue+green (for cyan) to outputs #2 and #3, player three green to output #2, and player four red+blue (for purple) to outputs #1 and #3, yes, you can do this.  With this method, lighting up button "number 1" (activating outputs 1, 2 and 3) would light each of the players "number 1" button, in their respective colors.  You would also still have a certain amount of color changing effects possible on the multi-color buttons, and of course flashing and fades would work on all of them.

Any combination is possible, but it boils down to the level of control over the lights you feel you will need.  Be sure to pick up a copy of the LED-Blinky software as well.