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Electronic skin for multi-colored buttons

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Yvan256:

Hi everyone,

I've been exchanging a few emails with someone from Kent Displays (kentdisplays.com) about their Reflex electronic skin product, to see if it would be possible to make small round plates to put inside clear Sanwa OBSC-30 buttons.

After reading a bit more and a few more details about their products, he told me the skin can be thermoformed, so maybe the skin could cover the whole inside of the clear top (the top and a few millimeters of the sides), meaning we could get dynamic colored buttons, up to eight custom colors (that could be matched to, say, the colors of the Happ Competition buttons). I'm not sure where the limit of eight colors comes from, I'm waiting for more details about this.

If all the technical details work out, it would mean dynamically colored buttons that are NOT flashlights. Because frankly, not everyone is a fan of LED lighting.

My questions are:
- how many would be interested in such a product? And how many buttons would you need?
- would Ultimarc or someone else be interested in manufacturing this with the help of Kent Displays?
- how much would you pay for each button, on top of the price of the button itself?
- would the Sanwa OBSC-30 be okay, or would most people prefer another type of button? I know I'm a fan of USA-style buttons with convex tops myself, but AFAIK there's no such buttons similar to the OBSC-30 with a clear top for an insert at the top.


Edit: I just received a reply, their minimum order quantity for custom manufacturing is 50K units...

At 12 buttons per person (let's say a two players cabinet with 6 buttons per player) it would require about 4200 people to hit 50K units. I also still need to hear about pricing, it will probably be next week.

If it's not too expensive, count me in for at least 12 buttons.

Alright, we only need 4199 more people, who's in?   :P

Unstupid:

What benefit does this have over the current LED lit buttons?

Nephasth:

Flashlights?





SavannahLion:


--- Quote from: Yvan256 on September 07, 2012, 04:19:20 pm --- I'm not sure where the limit of eight colors comes from, I'm waiting for more details about this.

--- End quote ---

I find it interesting that they would have a brochure on their "* Under development" product but nothing for their current offering.

But looking over their brochure and white papers, it's easy to guess where the 8 colors comes from. It probably comes from an 7 line limit (ie 8 bits) Switch to 16 or 32 lines and you'd probably see a corresponding increase if they bother to manufacture such a thing. In a nutshell, it's probably using the cheapest controller possible. Some might think about that and wonder, if 8 bits are used to control the colors, why aren't there 9 colors? (For when all the colors are "off" there should be a base color), the 8th bit might be used as a 1-wire communication source or whatever. I didn't look too deep into that but it makes perfect sense. It's not like you're transmitting an assload of data.

Which brings me to my next point. Someone is going to have to figure out how to feed 8 super small wires up into that thing or pack the empty space inside that button with a super small shift register or microcontroller or whatever and work out a communication protocol back to the PC. There are all sorts of ways to attack this but the end result is going to be the same, this isn't going to be a cheap solution.

It's an interesting product though. But you're going to have to find out if it can come in under a tight budget.

Yvan256:


--- Quote from: Nephasth on September 07, 2012, 08:41:10 pm ---Flashlights?

--- End quote ---

Buttons aren't supposed to emit light, they're supposed to be plastic molded into a specific color. Those looks like christmas lights to me. Not to mention that only the rings are color-lighted. The most recent review about LED-lit buttons also shows that getting a uniform color distribution is very hard, especially the top of the button.

At this point I'm thinking about a rotating plate that can elevate and lower, with buttons in multiple colors, with a hole in the control panel. Obviously it would be limited to a single row of buttons such as the Neo-Geo setup, unless you wanted to go with a really, really complex setup that would look like a modern vending machine for each and every button. The volume required under the control panel would be huge, to say the least.

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