LED "Cabinet Lighting" Question.

[Santoro]

I have 2 LED-Wiz' in my cabinet and I have it all set up with LED-Blinky the way I want it.  I still need to add the cabinet lighting, which will consist of 3 RGB LED strips I bought a while ago.  I am envisioning the cabinet lighting slowly fading in and out or slowly cycling through the color spectrum endlessly.  I have a few quesions:

1) Is there a way to 'carve out' a set of inputs on the LEDWiz and have it run a separate animation regardless of what the FE/Game is doing? 
2) Worst case, if I have to buy another controller what would be the best way to accomplish what I am after?
3) I only need 1 set of RGB outputs, what is the cheapest solution? Pac Drive?

Thanks!

[Nephasth]

1) LEDBlinky can recognize which inputs are cabinet lighting, I just wish it could run cabinet lighting animations independantly like you're wanting to do.
3)Pac Drive is only On/Off you won't be able to get the fade you're looking for with it.

[Santoro]

Looks like an Arduino might be in my future.

http://scruss.com/blog/2010/09/12/hsv-colour-cycling-led-on-arduino/

[Santoro]

Wait a sec - I just searched some more and found this:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=115894.0

I need to poke around the app a little more it seems.

edit: I just read it again.  I still need a separate, third LED-wiz for it

[Nephasth]

Well, if you got the LED strips I'm thinking you did, and you just want to run a simple animation, get one of these. For $5.38 shipped (44 key) it's worth a try. Has 6 programmed animations and it's a hell of a lot cheaper than buying another LED-Wiz. The 24 key remote is only $3.58 shipped and has 4 animations which you can control the speed of.

[Mysterioii]

If your RGB strips are the "all LEDs are always the same color" type and not the "each LED can be a different color at any point in time" type, then yeah one of those setups would probably be fine.  I might suggest getting a spare though, just to be on the safe side.  I got an RGB strip off of ebay that came with one just like that, and the controller has apparently gone bad.  I coulda just got a bad one, who knows.  They're cheap enough that 2 of them still isn't a bad deal.

If you really want a microcontroller you might try a Teensy, you can use the arduino environment and they're cheaper.

[EDIT]: If you're driving an LED strip off of a microcontroller you'd likely need a mosfet circuit or something similar on each color channel, the microcontroller likely wouldn't be able to source/sink enough current for whole strips of LEDs, and many of the strips run off of 12v.  I'm not even sure that an LED-Wiz could handle an LED strip without some external circuitry.  Too much current.

[loz1962]

Hi  Have a look at this mini RGB controller, I used one in a LED wash/flood light and it works great. Regards
http://www.bigclive.com/rgbcont.htm 

[arzoo]

1) LEDBlinky can recognize which inputs are cabinet lighting, I just wish it could run cabinet lighting animations independantly like you're wanting to do.

Just to clarify Nephasth here – LEDBlinky can run a single independent animation for cabinet lighting. All cabinet LEDs must be wired to their own LED controller(s). But it cannot run different cabinet animations for different events (FE Active, Game Start, etc.) - this is a requested feature.

[Nephasth]

Thanks, arzoo. I forgot about that until Santoro posted the link to that thread. Still would LOVE to see different animations/colors based on events, but I'm sure that's quite the hurdle.

[Santoro]

OK I think I understand.  So if I decide that it is worth buying another LED-Wiz for it,  I can have choose a single animation to run on the cabinet lighting all the time.

There is no cheaper alternative to the LED Wiz for this limited use, eh?  That stinks, but I get that this is a pretty small niche market.

[Mysterioii]

I still think you need to be careful about how much current you're running through the LED-wiz.  What sort of strips are you talking about?  You mean a little strip of 5 LEDs or so, or are you talking about the 1 meter or 5 meter strips from ebay running off of +12Vdc?  Those things need some serious current.

[Nephasth]

I still think you need to be careful about how much current you're running through the LED-wiz.  What sort of strips are you talking about?  You mean a little strip of 5 LEDs or so, or are you talking about the 1 meter or 5 meter strips from ebay running off of +12Vdc?  Those things need some serious current.

Yea, but those strips are cut-to-size and can be distributed across multiple outputs of the LED-Wiz to help with current draw.

[Mysterioii]

I still think you need to be careful about how much current you're running through the LED-wiz.  What sort of strips are you talking about?  You mean a little strip of 5 LEDs or so, or are you talking about the 1 meter or 5 meter strips from ebay running off of +12Vdc?  Those things need some serious current.

Yea, but those strips are cut-to-size and can be distributed across multiple outputs of the LED-Wiz to help with current draw.

True, but I'm just saying do your homework first before smoking your $45 LED-wiz board.  I just saw some 5m RGB strips running at +12v on ebay that said they ran at 72 watts so that's like 6 amps for a full strip.  He's probably not using 5m but that's why I asked how long his strips were.  I've got plans for my cab that will take close to a full 5m strip.

The specifications for the LED-Wiz are a bit ethereal...  "The output drivers used with the LED-WIZ are technically capable of handling up to 50v at 500ma per output. However, as the LED-Wiz is not designed to handle the maximums possible as a result of driving every output at its fullest potential, it is ultimately up to the user to decide what is prudent and safe when deciding how to use the LED-Wiz in their application."  I don't see anything in the documentation about total current draw through the whole board either.  Basically if you're doing anything other than run of the mill LEDs you're taking your chances, which is fine, I'm just saying give it some thought.  You *could* split things up and use multiple outputs but you still have to wonder about the unspecified max current for the whole board, and it seems a waste to me to use up outputs that way.

Mosfets however are pretty cheap.  If you have any electronics skills, just make your own buffer circuits.  I just built a home monitor system in my basement to let me know if I had any water coming in, has some tilt switches on a shutoff valve on our sewer line and automatically shuts off power to an ejector pump when the valve is closed, that sort of thing.  I used mosfets to drive the relays and a buzzer/alarm off of +12v using control signals from the +5v microcontroller.  I used FQP7P06 mosfets from mouser, rated at +60Vdc and 6.7 amps.  Cost under a dollar each.  Some cheap perfboard, wire, one 10KOhm resistor on each gate (practically free).  Total material cost is under five bucks, just takes a little of your time.  I've got some lighting plans for my cabinet (as soon as I get some time) and I'll definitely be buffering things with driver circuits like that.

[Santoro]

Thanks all, I just ordered another LED-Wiz.  Too much effort trying to find a cheap solution.

These are 12V RGB LED Strips I have, I will provide external 12V power to the LED wiz.

http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-bin/store/index.cgi?action=DispPage&Page2Disp=%2Fspecs%2FFLS-RGB.htm

[Mysterioii]

How many and what length?  Nice that they have a current draw chart right there.  Looks like you'd be good for about 100 LEDs per trio of outputs since the red draws more than the green and blue.  Still a bit concerned since the led-wiz documentation doesn't specify a max current draw for the whole card at once, but so long as your animation is fading and changing then at least you're letting each channel rest for a bit.  You won't max out the current unless you blast everything full white for an extended time...  So I suggest not doing that...   

[Santoro]

I got 3 strips at 15 LEDs per.  I'll bet that if the LEDwiz was incapable of handling this kind of load we'd have heard about it by now.

[Nephasth]

I got 3 strips at 15 LEDs per.  I'll bet that if the LEDwiz was incapable of handling this kind of load we'd have heard about it by now.

I'll be running 8 sets of 9-12 RGB LEDs of a similar strip off an LED-Wiz. I don't foresee any issues.

[Mysterioii]

Oh yeah you're fine.  I was assuming the worst, like several hundred LEDs.