Suggestions for LED Lighting / LED Controller for Skeeball Cabinet.

[nipsmg]

I've been working on a refinishing/refurbishing a skeeball cabinet, and I want to look towards integrating LEDs into the cabinet.

Cabinet project
Skeeball Software Project

I need LEDs for 2 uses.

1. In the top of the cabinet where the scoring is displayed, there are 2 holes in the bottom that aim down towards the scoring board with the rings.  IN a normal skeeball cabinet, there are brackets that have normal light bulb sockets where 2 light bulbs screw in.  With the TV I mounted in the cabinet, I can't fit the light sockets anymore.  I need to come up with a solution to add high a set of high brightness, low profile LEDs to illuminate the scoring board.  (I might want addressable RGB LEDs to change the color  dynamically)

2. I want to light up the pockets from the inside somehow with LEDs to enhance gameplay.  Things like lighting up bonus holes, etc.

My questions are:  What should i use for this?  LED strips?  If so, how do I address them?  Can an LED wiz handle something like this?  How many leds/ strips would I use.

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[Nephasth]

LEDWiz coupled with LED strips would be perfect. Watch your current draws.

Cut your strips to length where you need them. Number would depend on the number of independently controllable lights you wanted.

[nipsmg]

Any specific type/brand/source on strips you can point me to?

Also, what about lighted buttons?  I’m looking arrow or triangle shaped buttons, and a large circular lit button.  My cabinet needs up, down, left, right triangular buttons. A back button, info button that I’d want lit, and a large ‘seect’ Button.  I’d want these addressable as well.  I’m looking more for a black plastic ring with a lit plunger, not happ style arcade buttons. 

Problem is, a lot of the ones I can find use a lamp, not an LED.  Would that be an issue for the LED wiz?

[Nephasth]

You really only need three buttons. You've based some of your skeeball games off of darts games... All a dart board needs is three buttons, up, down, and select. Those triangular and rectangular buttons are trash IMO. Also, instead of trying to shoehorn the technical aspects of products you've chosen based upon aesthetics or ease to locate in a google search... Find products that are easy to incorporate into your design. Make the games easy to select. Make the controls as foolproof as possible.

[PL1]

Problem is, a lot of the ones I can find use a lamp, not an LED.

Swap the wedge-base lamp for a wedge-base LED.  Paradise Arcade Shop carries a variety of colors here.



Surface mount (SMD) replacement LEDs like these are larger diameter (0.455") than #161 lamps (0.375") and will not work in these rectangular or triangular buttons.
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Neph is right that Up/Down/Select covers all the basic functions you need.

The only other button you might want to consider is Back.


Scott

[Nephasth]

The only other button you might want to consider is Back.

I vote having something like "back", "return", "previous", or "exit" as a selectable menu item. He did write the software...

And going even further... Program the select button to bring up a menu in game so you can exit or change game parameters or whatever.

[nipsmg]

There's a couple reasons for the up down left right.

The way I have the software written write now uses them differently. 

Up/Down select number of players, Left/Right selects game mode. 

For X10 or Zap, left or right will select whether you're playing 301,501,701,901 and up down will choose 1-4 players.

Also, the menu is left to right so I'm using left to right.

Also, there's a back button, and an Info/HighScore button that lets you bring up the high score table and/or instructions by tapping.

[nipsmg]

I stopped hemming and hawing and bought the following:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LZDGVYG/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XBLH25X/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Small buttons for U,D,L,R,Info and Back.. Big shiny green button for select.  that should do it.  I got enough of them in the multi-button kit that at least I have options.  I figure for the directional buttons I'll go with red for up/down, yellow for Right left since red and yellow are skeeball colors anways).. White for Info and Blue for Back.  I'll have to see if I can get some decals printed however, because these don't look like they accept any kind of inserts.

I'm assuming these will work with an LEDWIZ without too much trouble?

Is there a specific brand / type of LED strip that I can/should be using with an LEDWIZ?

[Nephasth]

I'm assuming these will work with an LEDWIZ without too much trouble?

Is there a specific brand / type of LED strip that I can/should be using with an LEDWIZ?

http://groovygamegear.com/PDF/LEDWIZv2_INSTALL.pdf

[Nephasth]

What software do you plan on using? I've used LEDBlinky with MAME... But will you have to write your own?

[nipsmg]

Yeah I’ll have to see if I can get some cross-platform code to control it.  Ideally I’d like to write support directly j to the code.

[thatpurplestuff]

Yeah I’ll have to see if I can get some cross-platform code to control it.  Ideally I’d like to write support directly j to the code.

If you can code support directly more power to you, but I highly recommend LEDblinky if you're just looking to get LEDs running quickly and not reinvent the wheel (you can always change it later).  I wrote some Skeeball software that uses it and it works really nicely.  I'll have to pull up my code on my other computer, but if I remember right it's as simple as creating the animations within LEDblinky and then you can just play them whenever by calling "LEDBlinky.exe name_of_animation_here.lwax".  You can also control each hole individually for certain games (like Cricket where holes can change color, turn on and off, etc)... it's a bit more complicated but still pretty easy once you read the documentation.  If launching executables from within your game is difficult for whatever reason, you can use something like AutoHotKey to monitor the clipboard and execute commands anytime specific strings get copied to the clipboard (it's a bit cumbersome, but since I wrote my software in AS2 so I had to use a few workarounds to get it functioning how I wanted it to).

Just looked at your machine/software... looking nice!  I'll definitely be watching for updates!