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Can LEDwiz handle AC power?
supafraud:
Hello, does anyone know if LEDwiz can handle the AC juice (6 volts) coming from my ol EM pinball machine power supply? I'd like to use it to drive the lamps. Anyone know if that's a bad idea?
WindDrake:
Don't feed the LEDWiz AC. DC only.
drventure:
+1
If you need to control AC, use the LEDWiz to drive a reed relay or opto isolator circuit. And even then, I'd keep it to low voltage AC unless you know what you're doing.
That said, i've used an LEDWiz to control ELWire and that stuff uses ~70v ac (but low current).
But that was using optoisolators to control the AC, The LEDWiz never sees ac.
supafraud:
Thanks for the info. I noticed that the pinball bulbs will still light up if I give them DC (I used on of the bulbs to test a pacdrive I'm also fiddling with) which I guess is no surprise because it's just electricity running through a filament. However I noticed with just the default 5(?) volts that comes out of the USB and who knows how many amps that they are pretty dim. If I get a power supply to feed them 6 volts DC running at 10 amps is that too much for it to handle?
drventure:
Yeah, even if you push DC to the lamps, those are lamps, not IC's, so they're an inductive load, which the LEDWiz isn't really designed to handle.