Need general help about LED's.

[IronBuddha]

I've built CP's before, so I understand the basics. But I'm interested in upgrading everything to LED. I'm buying a blue translucent trackball and planning on having a led under it. I'm also planning on buying all led buttons and joysticks from Paradise. I'm just trying to find a way to have all the LED's steadily running while the computer is on. I don't need them to dance around to music or anything special like that. I plan on (emphasize on plan) using my GPwiz for the joysticks and buttons, and using the trackball itself for the mouse buttons and LED under it. Here is what I'm assuming is possible and I'm asking for help to see if this would work because I'm not completely sure.

For the LED's under the Trackball and 3 mouse buttons I plan on daisy chaining them to the existing ground and power from the trackball itself off of it's PS/2, as for the buttons and joysticks there's an extra ground and +5v on the GPWiz, what I'm not sure about is, can I just daisy chain them to that? Is the extra 5v connection constantly running on the GPWiz or only when I press the microswitch? The reason why I'm not 100% is because to me that seems too simple, with all these LED's is there a limit? The trackball would be lighting 4 LED's and the GPWiz would be lighting all the buttons and joysticks. Can something blow or overload, is there something more complicated to it or is it really that simple?

I know there's a way to use the computer power supply but I haven't found anything detailed explaining this method, if there's a detailed explanation somewhere if someone can point it out to me that would be awesome!

Sorry if this comes off as a noob post, I have been searching for hours trying to find assuring answers and just haven't had any luck. If anyone else has done it this way, let me know what to expect. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[gamepimp]

Are you planning on using 12v or 5v LEDs? I have 28 buttons on my CP with 12v LEDs that I purchased from Paradise. Before I bought the LED controller I'm using, I had all the buttons wired together and drawing power from the 12v output from my computer's power supply. Basically, there's a lead on my PS that has 4 wires on a male Molex style connector. There's a red wire (+5v) on one end, a yellow wire (+12v) on the other end and two black wires (grounds) in the center. This is the connecter that is used for older IDE hard drives (I believe). I purchased a female Molex connector from a computer store (Micro Center) that connects to this lead from the PS. It has 4 free wires that u can use to wire up ur buttons. Basically, I took the yellow and black wires from that adaptor and wired the buttons up to them. Daisy chain the ground wires in parallel (hook all negatives together and all positives together to have one lead for each) and then connect to the wires from ur PS. Voila! The lights will be lit constantly while ur computer is running.

[drventure]

gamepimps basically right, if all you want to do is light them up, all you have to do is connect to ground an power, BUT you probably also need resistors in there to keep the LEDs from sucking too much current and blowing.

I've used this page many times to do LED resistor calculations.

http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz

Instead of using the PS from the PC (which there's nothing wrong with btw), you might also consider grabbing an old wall wart powersupply that you aren't using anymore. Check the voltage coming out of it, and the current it can supply, wire an appropriate resistor into the circuit and you can test without a computer at all.

When you put it in the cabinet, you can hook computer and wallwart up to a smartstrip and everything will turn on when the PC turns on.

Plus that'll let you hook up a few more AC widgets if necessary

[saint]

Also recommend http://ledcalc.com/ - that's my go to site when doing LED work.

[BobA]

If you get 12V or 5V LEDs from Paradise then you do not have to worry about a resistor as they are already installed for the apropriate voltage.   Just make sure your 5V are connected to red and black and 12V are connected to yellow and black on the molex connector.

[IronBuddha]

Thanks guys for the help, I'll go the easier route and connect the buttons etc. I buy from paradise to the molex connector on my PC.

[IronBuddha]

Actually I decided to buy a LEDWiz. Like I mentioned all the buttons I'm hooking up are 12v, I also picked up a set of the LED Nova Matrix Linx Marquee lighting. There's a few questions I have about how I want to set it up. On the LEDWiz I know how to set up the banks to 12v, I read somewhere (might have been Randy through email, can't remember right now) to measure up the polarity and run a in line fuse to the Ledwiz, but since the buttons have resistors on them, is the in line fuse still needed?
Also with the Nova Matrix, there's 2 things I'm curious about. Can it be hooked up to the Ledwiz, and if it can, my cabinet has a on/off switch, could I hook up the Nove Matrix to the switch and then to the Ledwiz. I didn't know if switching it on or off while it's connected to the Ledwiz could mess anything up.

[BobA]

The fuse is recommended as you are using an external 12V power source and it helps protect the circuitry.  Here is a link re the 12 V LED wiring.  Discount Phildo's answer as it is totally incorrect.  12V LEDs LEDwiz

[IronBuddha]

After talking with Randy I decided the on/off switch may not be a good idea. He wasn't able to discuss exactly any power measurements cause of liabilities but I found something on another site explaining how to determine what size fuse to use for how many led's you're using. I'm gonna try this out and see what happens, I'm waiting on a few things yet before I can put together my control panel so hopefully within the next few weeks I'll have it set up and can post some pictures and let everyone know how it works out.

http://www.oznium.com/forum/topic15761