Light Buttons with LED Hardware/Software - COMING SOON!!!

[DinoRoger]

Well I am back. Due to some complications I had to leave the MAME scene for awhile. Before I left I was discussing an idea for lighting LED

[RetroBorg]

I think your idea sounds great. I'd give it an 8 but if you are able to add the following suggestions I'll give it a 10.  

An attract mode like on pinball machines, where all the LED's go off in sequences etc.

A sound detection device for people who play music on their cabinet so the buttons can pulsate with the beat of the music.

Perhaps some sort of ability to detect if the game needs a 4-way or 8-way joystick, your program could trigger some LED on the control panel that says 4-way joystick so people using the latest above panel 4/8-way switching joysticks know they need to switch from 8-way to 4-way etc.

[Jakobud]

Cool idea. Sounds like it will compliment the Controls.dat project very well.

[LoRDDeVO]

I think Its a good idea.  only question is do people have that many buttons that they need a light telling them which buttons are active?  Its a nice touch for a mod, and I would love to test one out but as for usefullness i don't know.  Thats just my opinion  

[paigeoliver]

I would like to volunteer as a tester. I currently own 4 complete Mame cabinets (horizontal 2 player 6 buttons, vertical 4-way, vertical 8-way, and horizontal trackball), with 5 more being worked on (Defender controls cabinet, Battlezone controls cabinet, dual steering wheel cab, vertical cocktail, and a vertical trackball cabinet).

[Carsten Carlos]

I think Its a good idea.  only question is do people have that many buttons that they need a light telling them which buttons are active?

Hehe, not that much on my cab (only golden-Age inspired controlpanels = not so many buttons), but on most of the controlpanels I've seen here this would be very useful.

I really like the idea though and would love to see this in action! So anyone who used this great new toy has to post pictures!  

BTW, I think a pinball-like attract mode is definitely a good idea! (e.g. when you are still in the game menu)

Really thought that this project died - what did you found out which button colors (standard Happs) are lightable?

[Sephroth57]

i think its an awesome idea even aside from usefulness just for the cool factor. its a nice 'mod' to give your cab a little something extra. I would be glad to help test this, let me know when things are ready to roll  

[Lance]

Sounds like a cool idea, almost an extra step on top of the front ends which show the controls for a game.

If you are still looking for people to test I would be interested.

lance

[HaRuMaN]

Sounds like a great idea... especially when you have people come over...  "Now which buttons do I use?"

I would love to help test it.

[DinoRoger]

I already tested a dance mode sequence and it will be very easy to implement. Currently a dance pattern is compiled by you using an editor that will be part of the program. You create your own sequences and delays. I will start work on adding a sound activated option to the hardware this week. Great ideas. Keep them coming. Want to get as many things implemented before my final hardware design goes to the manufacture.

I am also placing my order this week from my vendor for about 50 different LED's. ranging from very bright to the ultra bright (3 candella). Anyone know what LED series they use in traffic lights these days? One of the LED I am testing says great for break lights.    

I will be doing allot of testing on my own and hope to have a final build by the end of the month if all goes well. Send me a private message with information on why you would make a good BETA tester. Please understand if I do not reply to your private posts (I have hardware/software to build).

Keep the ideas, suggestions, comments coming.

[Lilwolf]

Cool!  Glad to see your keeping up with it!

Some ideas / comments...

1) If you are controlling / keeping track of the number of buttons... You might also want to keep track of the joysticks used also... Then maybe even 8way, 4way or 2way.  Then I could see someone adding some lights under their joystick to light up based on the controls.  Would require lexan or something top... but think how cool it would be for a 2player 4way game to show up with both controls up/down/left/right showing... but not the diagonals!

2) Have you considered hotswappable control panels?  Will it work?  If you want to test a setup with multiple control panels let me know.  I have a few...

3) Make sure you can modify per game in some meaningful way.  Why?  MAME IS WRONG... OFTEN!  It states how many players can play at once... but not how many controls there are... so you get a ton of 2 player games with only one joystick.  This would be a great addition to the controls.dat (as mentioned above).

4) You might consider changing the code to have a wrapper that starts mame.  So you call mame itself...and frontends call your program.  This would remove any overhead no matter how little you think it is.  But then again... if you have it working... this sounds like a bad idea... so scrap it...

[BillyJack]

Welcome back!  Now that I have my translucent microswitch buttons, i'll be very interested once again!

Suggestion / question:

Can you make this (does it already) do the same thing for the other emulators (NES, SNES, N64, Genesis, you name it)?

I suppose that could be done just by looking for the emu's .exe since those games had standardized controllers originally.

[DinoRoger]

Can you make this (does it already) do the same thing for the other emulators (NES, SNES, N64, Genesis, you name it)?

Yes the software will have support for other emulators also. There will be a lists folder. Any file with a *.lst extension will be read.  I will compile as many emulators lists as I can. The lists can be read and edited with nopepad so you can basically control anything if you like or create your own lists.

[dommer]

Would love to be a beta tester, and would be willing to pay to participate in/support the effort.  I have a mame cab with 4 8 ways, 1 4 way, a slikstik spinner, happ trackball, and a bunch of associated buttons.

[Generic Eric]

Glad to see you are back!

Can't test unfortuanetly, but I am DEFINITELY intersted in seeing your product developed.

Will you have a website with more info and your progress anytime soon?

[DinoRoger]

Yes I am working on getting a site completed. Hope to have it up within a week with progress report and pictures. I promise this project will happen this time. I have working software and hardware developed and a group of 3 people helping. Now its all about getting it manufactured and deciding costs and such.

[Oldskool]

Very soon I will be looking for a few BETA testers that will receive a free product for testing.

Sure, count me in.

[shmokes]

I love this idea.  Unfortunately all my buttons are black and from what I've heard black buttons won't let ANY light through.

[DinoRoger]

I will be peforming many LED tests for the next two weeks. I currently have white, black, green, purple, yellow, and red buttons to test with.  I have purchased many different kinds of LEDs. One of the LEDs says great for brake lights and other one you cannot even look at when it is on becuase it can damage your eyes.  I will share my results with pictures once my web site is up.

The cool things with white buttons is you can turn the button into any color depending on the color of the LED.  

I love this idea.  Unfortunately all my buttons are black and from what I've heard black buttons won't let ANY light through.

[Lilwolf]

One more suggestion..

I would like to see some 'screen saver' modes.  

If your not in a game...   It could wait... then start rotating the buttons.... flashing around... going in circles ect.

I think that would be really cool to have your buttons in attract mode when in your frontend.

Also.  Any chance to give access to others to change them in realtime?  I'm currenlty adding a music player to my frontend... and I have access to the equalizer info.  It would be pretty cool to be able to convert my buttons to a real life visualization

[NIVO]

Now to find a manufacturer of translucent microswitch buttons. And if the price is high, perhaps go in on a group buy of some sort. With fellow BYOAC'ers in your region/state, would help for the distribution/collection/shipping etc etc.

[Zakk]

Hey, I'm sure there's no shortage of beta testers, but I'd be willing to do a project with them, and feature it as one of my conversions...

I just love things that light up

[mr.Curmudgeon]

This is DEFINITELY something I would buy.

Suggestions I hope you implement:
Sound sensitive mode
Programmable Sequences
Joystick LED's

My suggestion:

I second (or third) the idea that joystick LED's would be a GREAT addition, however, I'd like some flexibility concerning how I could use this feature, since each control panel will vary in it's design (artwork, etc) so the lighting may need to vary.  This could be as simple as allowing a couple screw terminal positions to control a 4LED/8LED bank based on the required joystick. I think Lil'Wolf is asking for the same thing, but I'm not sure. Various effects would be cool as well (fading effects, fast blinks, fade/pulse,etc..)

A user assigned set of led banks would be cool as well, I have no idea what it could be used for, but that's the joy...extended design capability.

I'm no electrical engineer, so I have no idea how easy or practical this flexibility would be. Just blue-skyin'.

Thanks for working on this project!
mrC

[SirPeale]

Now to find a manufacturer of translucent microswitch buttons. And if the price is high, perhaps go in on a group buy of some sort. With fellow BYOAC'ers in your region/state, would help for the distribution/collection/shipping etc etc.

You can get them from Censible Amusements.

[Xiaou2]

 id like to see this go a bit further with lighting support for games that output lights.  

 Discs of Tron used 2 sets of flashing lights above head, the internal artwork lighting turned off durring the title showing, and i think a few other lights could flash.

 Simularly, there were a bunch of other cabs that had light output controllers... like spyhunter - lighting the appropriate 'weapon' from under the artwork...

  Im  sure that a dev could work with you to help in getting that functionality to work with a device.

  Finally, a motor & cylenoid driver would also be usefull too.  For use in making replicas of mechanical games like pitch & bat's, pinballs, ice cold beer, ect... and even some video games - Force feedback, ticket output, ect.

 id buy a sitdown Outrun motor type interface kit in a heartbeat.  Id love to make a moving cockpit.  id buy a real motion cab... but they are too wide for most homes doors (youd need a double door entry)... and im sure i could make a narrower cab, that can dissassembled if nessessary.

[TheGatesofBill]

I'll say that I'd test it, although I'm sure you have enough already.

Anyways, how about including some sort of source code / programming information so other people can make programs that take advantage of the button lights.

[Ted_Striker]

 id like to see this go a bit further with lighting support for games that output lights.  

 Discs of Tron used 2 sets of flashing lights above head, the internal artwork lighting turned off durring the title showing, and i think a few other lights could flash.

 Simularly, there were a bunch of other cabs that had light output controllers... like spyhunter - lighting the appropriate 'weapon' from under the artwork...

  Im  sure that a dev could work with you to help in getting that functionality to work with a device.

  Finally, a motor & cylenoid driver would also be usefull too.  For use in making replicas of mechanical games like pitch & bat's, pinballs, ice cold beer, ect... and even some video games - Force feedback, ticket output, ect.

In your board design (if you have the outputs) how about a few (3-4) relay contacts.  All of the above could be accomplished by just having some dry contacts.  Then in your software design, make a "plugin" structure.  So then all the great ideas can be accomplished after the fact without a redesign of the board.  If relay contacts were included, we could use them for triggering our illuminated translucent trackballs.  As long as the relays could be programed like the other LED's ( you said you are working on this) this could be a very cool and functional tool. I would recommend opto isolated relays so different power supplies independent from the board could be used.  Heck, I don't know how you are designing your hardware, but if you used relay contacts (or transistors or whatever), anything could be hooked up to your board, not just LED's.  And if a music pluggin or attract pluggin were created (as requested above) we could do cold cathode lights, marquee lights, etc... basically anything.  With a music pluggin cycling the lights, I can see the BYO jukebox guys latching on to this thing (myself included).  Maybe this is beyond the scope of your project but a larger product market is rarely a bad thing.  I'm really seeing this thing as really nice light controller, not just a "new Mame button thing".  I guess what I'm getting at in this long ramble is make the thing modular and flexible.  But hell you should know this crowd... if it can be hacked.. we will do it.  If it can't be hacked, we will hack it so it can be hacked ...

Also, with all these bright LED's, please keep power consumption in mind.  Most of us will be probably powering this off of our pc power supply.  A ton of those "you can't look at them" LED's could suck some major juice even though they are LED's.  Also some of those super bright LED's require more than the standard 2V that generic LED's most commonly use.  A variety of LED's could make a driver circuit a bear.  So I guess a question is in order.  In your design will the LED's be included, will we be forced to use your LED's, or will we be able to use whatever LED's we have laying around? Or you may not be able to answer this until the board design is finalized.  

Whatever board design you come up with, I would like to see screw contact terminals for connections.  So we can make whatever wire length our cabinet requires (vertical, sit down, custom etc..).  Just like our good ole pal Ipac uses for buttons and such.

[DinoRoger]

In your board design (if you have the outputs) how about a few (3-4) relay contacts.  All of the above could be accomplished by just having some dry contacts.  Then in your software design, make a "plugin" structure.  So then all the great ideas can be accomplished after the fact without a redesign of the board.  If relay contacts were included, we could use them for triggering our illuminated translucent trackballs.  As long as the relays could be programed like the other LED's ( you said you are working on this) this could be a very cool and functional tool. I would recommend opto isolated relays so different power supplies independent from the board could be used.  Heck, I don't know how you are designing your hardware, but if you used relay contacts (or transistors or whatever), anything could be hooked up to your board, not just LED's.  And if a music pluggin or attract pluggin were created (as requested above) we could do cold cathode lights, marquee lights, etc... basically anything.  With a music pluggin cycling the lights, I can see the BYO jukebox guys latching on to this thing (myself included).  Maybe this is beyond the scope of your project but a larger product market is rarely a bad thing.  I'm really seeing this thing as really nice light controller, not just a "new Mame button thing".  I guess what I'm getting at in this long ramble is make the thing modular and flexible.  But hell you should know this crowd... if it can be hacked.. we will do it.  If it can't be hacked, we will hack it so it can be hacked ...

Also, with all these bright LED's, please keep power consumption in mind.  Most of us will be probably powering this off of our pc power supply.  A ton of those "you can't look at them" LED's could suck some major juice even though they are LED's.  Also some of those super bright LED's require more than the standard 2V that generic LED's most commonly use.  A variety of LED's could make a driver circuit a bear.  So I guess a question is in order.  In your design will the LED's be included, will we be forced to use your LED's, or will we be able to use whatever LED's we have laying around? Or you may not be able to answer this until the board design is finalized.  

Whatever board design you come up with, I would like to see screw contact terminals for connections.  So we can make whatever wire length our cabinet requires (vertical, sit down, custom etc..).  Just like our good ole pal Ipac uses for buttons and such.

In the current design it will be LED's only because we are designing a power supply that will be sold with the hardware. The chips are rated only to support a number of LED's. I am shooting towards a total of up to 74 LED support (super bright).

Also one of the LED banks will be for lighting the trackball and trackball button LED's when a game uses the trackball system.

From other posts there will also be a seperate LED for 4 and 8 way joysticks that you can mount near the joystick.

We are working on getting the sound activation and dance mode builder designed now.

In future products I will consider updating the board hardware to support any electronics. I have to start small write now because a lack of funds. If the L.A.M.E. hardware works out then I should be able to afford an investment in other hardware designs as you mentioned.

The board will have plenty of screw terminal banks. Here is what I was thinking for a count. Let me know if you suggest other #'s:

Button 1 = 4
Button 2 = 4
Button 3 = 4
Button 4 = 4
Button 5 = 4
Button 6 = 4
Button 7 = 4
Button 8 = 4
Button 9 = 4
Button 10 = 4
Player 1 = 2
Player 2 = 2
Player 3 = 2
Player 4 = 2
Coin 1 = 2
Coin 2 = 2
Coin 3 = 2
Coin 4 = 2
Trackball = 3
Trackball Buttons = 3
Pinball Left = 2
Pinball Right = 2
4 Way Joystick = 4
8 Way Joystick = 4
GROUND = 5

That would be a total of:
74 LED supports
79 terminal screws
25 Terminal screw banks

[Pixelhugger]

Looks like you're planning on implementing the joystick lights. I was just going to second, third , fourth that. I'd buy it for that, and that alone. I want my cab to be playable by a complete newb without my constant attention. Since I'll have switchables, I'm definitely eager to use your system!! I LOVE the idea of having the joystick directions themselves light up - four lights around a when a 4way game is played, 8 for the 8 way on switchables. Just too cool. I suppose with the board you propose, I could wire in a micro-controller and stepper motor or actuator to switch the joys automatically, which is something I've been thinking about for too, too long.

Thanks for your genius on this.

[Lilwolf]

I wouldn't try to label them... and allow it to be done programmatically.

Why?

you will find more control panels with 12 buttons (6 for each player) then with a trackball.

And are you planning on having support for other programmers?  I would love to see the same program that sets the lights to create a custom controller.cfg file that actually sets them up.  But that is just me... I wrote my own frontend because I hate configuring each game.

[RetroBorg]

In the current design it will be LED's only because we are designing a power supply that will be sold with the hardware. The chips are rated only to support a number of LED's. I am shooting towards a total of up to 74 LED support (super bright).

I was just wondering if this will compatiable with Australian conditions, here we use 240 V?

[Wade]

I suggest making a simple DOS command line program to turn on certain LEDs too.  It could be wrapped into just about any DOS frontend that way.

The attract mode ideas are great ideas!

Wade

[DinoRoger]

I suggest making a simple DOS command line program to turn on certain LEDs too.  It could be wrapped into just about any DOS frontend that way.

The attract mode ideas are great ideas!

Wade

I could throw in a simple DOS command utility that could controll the 24 banks of led's pretty easy.  Something like this?

LameMame.exe 110101010100011110010110

or

LameMame.exe dance.txt

The program I am writing write now is a Windows based only., but creating a basic DOS based utiltiy shouldnt be a problem.

[TheGatesofBill]

A DOS utility would work for some things, but I still think it would be a good idea to toss out some source code. That way you could make a game that took advantage of the button lights. For example, maybe something like a version of Stepmania (or similar) where the buttons corresponding to the arrows flashed when you had to hit them. Or maybe something like control panel Simon.

[cdbrown]

The link to the controls.dat project
http://www.fe.donkeyfly.com/yabbse/index.php

DinoRoger, you should check it out.  There is a viewer that's been created for it by Howard which upon selecting a game, brings up a graphic of the control panel and highlight which buttons are used and what they do.

Also, please make sure it can incorporate the ctrlr files.  IE I have a 7 button layout for players 1 and 2 which is basically a 6 button street fighter layout with a thumb button to allow for neo geo games.  So I have ctrlr files set up depending on the type of game and whether I want to make the thumb button button 1 or not.
  567     456     XXX
  234     123     234
1          X        1

Controls.dat viewer takes this into account.  

This would be really awesome especially if it would work with Aussie conditions like Retro said.  I could be a tester - have a 4 player panel, 7 buttons P1 and P2, 6 buttons P3 and P4 as well as coin and start buttons for each  

Cheers
-cdbrown

[RetroBorg]

DinoRoger,

As well as the controls.dat project there is also another guy who is working on a project for lighting up credit buttons. It can also do stuff like light up the van button in Spy Hunter,  according to him this could light up any button under any condition you can detect in memory, apparently it involves scanning memory locations in the ROMs.

Here is the link to his thead in the MAMERoom: http://www.cybertechdesign.net/yabbse/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=79;start=0

It sound to me if you were able to combine your project with the controls.dat project and this other project I've mentioned above, you would have a most excellent product indeed.

[Lilwolf]

the dos app would be great.  A dll would be better for the frontend developers and such...

But for me... the dos app would work great for some items.  But I really could see adding an equalizer to it... just for fun.

[DinoRoger]

the dos app would be great.  A dll would be better for the frontend developers and such...

But for me... the dos app would work great for some items.  But I really could see adding an equalizer to it... just for fun.

DLL is already done. It will be included with instruction on how to use it with the software.  

[Lilwolf]

Sweet... Let me know if you would like me to wrap it in java for you (incase any other java programmers here other then me

Also... will the DLL include setup AND direct functionality?  (IE, if I wanted to configure what each light goes to AND be able to turn them on/off?)

(should I start doing private messages for questions that I think I might be the only one interested in??)

[DinoRoger]

I should have a web site up tomorrow. Will post the URL here once it is complete. This way we dont have to spam the good people at BYOAC Forum.

The web site will have a forum, progress report and tons more info.

[DinoRoger]

One more thing left on the web site to do. Does anyone know any easy to configure, secure, and free e-mail server software?

[Lilwolf]

what OS are you hosting on?  At home or at another location?

What OS?  Assuming not Linux (because you wouldn't have to ask)..

And why do you need an email server running?  

[Valiam Arkais]

One more thing left on the web site to do. Does anyone know any easy to configure, secure, and free e-mail server software?

I use openwebmail.  It has worked good for quite some time.

-VA

[DinoRoger]

I am hosting on a local system at my business using Windows XP. A PostNuke module/block would be awesome but any other free software will work.

[DinoRoger]

Some new progress:

Just finished a seperate software piece that can run as a screen saver or as a regular exe that will perform the attract mode.  It is eiter sound activated or you create your own attract mode with delay statements.

The program uses allot of CPU but in idle mode why would you need the CPU.

The program will detect sound from the microphone.

Will report back with more details as I create them. Still trying to finish the web site.

[TheGatesofBill]

What do you expect this to cost when its ready?

[DinoRoger]

What do you expect this to cost when its ready?

Have not figured that out yet. Once I build the final prot-type I will gather all parts and manufacturing costs and decide on a price. A may even have combos like pre-wired lighted buttons and such.  I am working my hardest to make this a user friendly top quality product.

[KevSteele]

I've got to say I'm very excited about the possibilities of this project. It sounds very cool, and the more lights, the better  

Kevin

[DinoRoger]

Web site is finaly online. Please go and register on the forums. New details about the project can be found here:

http://lamearcade.com

[TheGatesofBill]

Registration is all messed up. You're going to have to disable account registration (or fix the e-mail). Either way, please active my account.



EDIT: How to disable the emailer:

Open up includes/emailer.php, find "global $phpEx, $phpbb_root_path;", add "return true;" under it & that should fix the problem. It should end up looking like this:

Code: [Select]

//
// Send the mail out to the recipients set previously in var $this->address
//
function send()
{
         global $phpEx, $phpbb_root_path;
         return true;

         if ( $this->address == NULL )
         {
                message_die(GENERAL_ERROR, 'No email address set', '', __LINE__, __FILE__);
         }

         if ( !$this->parse_email() )
         {
                 return false;
         }

[DinoRoger]

Your account ia active now. I think the problem is with the timeout delay. If you dont wait for about 30 seconds after clicking submit the e-mail doesnt get sent. I wil try your suggestion here in a few minutes, Thanks I am new to PostNuke and the forum.

[TheGatesofBill]

If you make the change I suggested, make sure you disable e-mail activation. Also, I've never used PostNuke, but I'm pretty familiar with phpBB, so if you need help with anything, let me know.

[DinoRoger]

Ya I tried what you mentioed but was getting errors every time I tried to register. it was probably because I didnt disable the e-mail activation like you mentioned.

[jdjuggler]

What ever happend with the project?
Anyone know?
JD

[KevSteele]

I wish I knew - the site's gone, and nothing.

I was/am very excited about this project, and now I'm regretting not asking to be on the beta test team (if there is one anymore!)

Kevin

[mr.Curmudgeon]

Me too.

I'm building my cab with the assumption that the LAME Aracade lighting system will be available at some point in the future. I will cry if he drops this project. It's one of the things I'm most excited to include in my machine.


Hope all is well....

[mccoy178]

Time to bring this idea back to life.  With the driver board being released last month, lets get some things going here.

[TheGatesofBill]

Actually, that was for driving just three LEDs off of the I-PAC, representing the keyboard lights. Unless I misunderstood, which is possible. I wish this was still around, I would have loved to play with it.

[Chris]

Time to bring this idea back to life.

[mccoy178]

I know the driver board is limited, I just like the idea of what this guy had going.  I am hoping one of the more savvy members can take this to the next level.  I felt the driver board may just bring attention back this way.

[Buddabing]

Time to bring this idea back to life.

[Chris]

What would be really nifty, although it may take USB, is to be able to have LED's ganged in groups of three (red, green and blue) with ideally at least three brightness levels (full, dim, off).  This would theoretically allow you to tell the button what color to be.  Of course, it would require clear translucent buttons to pull off...

--Chris

[Popcorrin]

Budda I am glad to hear you are still working on this!  I can hardly wait to try it out. 

[KevSteele]

Excellent news! I'm glad the idea lives on, and good luck Buddabing!

[quarterback]

I'm also considering an optional upgrade to 40 LEDs which will allow the bling bling strobe effects on that fancy control panel for which I can't find the link.

Is this it?

That's the ArcaLux

[Lilwolf]

I found a board that handled 64 leds back a while ago.. but it was pretty !@# expensive! 

I can't wait to see what you come up with... But why build it into your mame build?  Control.dat + a middleware piece or just another app would really be better don't you think? 

Also be nice for non-mame emulators.

[Buddabing]

I'm also considering an optional upgrade to 40 LEDs which will allow the bling bling strobe effects on that fancy control panel for which I can't find the link.

Is this it?

That's the ArcaLux

That's it. It was pretty cool, but $600. 

If I were to sell these, it would be much less.

In addition to MAME I would create a middleware application to control the LEDs.

[versapak]

Did the original project actually hit a road block and die, or did

[Popcorrin]

Buddabing I was wondering if you were going to design the software to light up led's for the joystick directions?  That way if a person was to place 8 led's around the joystick he could use your software to light 2, 4, or all 8 of the led's to signify whether the game is 2, 4, or 8 way?

If this were implemented I think a person could also use that feature along with a slight modification to the led driver board to automatically switch modes on Groovy Game Gear's 49-way joystick usb interface making a cabinet even more user friendly.  If you aren't familiar with the 49-way interface there is a description here.   http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,32747.0.html

[Trimoor]

To get past the limitations of available I/O lines, wire the LEDs in a matrix.  Most of you think of ghosting and blocking when you hear the work "matrix", but if done properly, and it works quite nicely.

The classic PIC16F48 has 13 I/O lines, giving you a 6 x 7 matrix.  This can control up to 84 LEDs.  Yes, 6x7=42, but remember that LEDs are diodes: if you reverse the polarity of the current, you can light a different LED.  Bipolar LEDs do this.

To solve the ghosting problem, you must scan the matrix.  This means only one row and column are activated at a time.  Before you go on about flickering, it would be doing this at 1-2 MHz.  Take a look at your monitor.  It's only scanning at 60-100 Hz.

The drawbacks of the matrix is that there is no common ground.  Every LED must have two wires leading to the controller.  It isn't too hard to do, but it takes longer.  The wiring harness can make this simple for users, but it might be rather expensive.  The controller board would have 84 pairs of header pins (like the kind on a motherboard power switch header), and the user would have 84 little jumper cables.  These cables would have a PC connector on each end, matching the header pins.  The two wires would be different colors to indicate polarity.  The user would plug one end into the board, and the other onto the LED (the pins happen to be the same type as the header pins, albeit a little longer.)

As for cholin's (my) idea, it would still work, but it would be a horrible rat's nest under there.  The best way to do this would be to implement the LED controller on the same board as the keyboard encoder.  That way, the LED controller would "know" what was being pressed, and act accordingly.

[Lilwolf]

Just because I always bring this up.

Any consideration for hotswap control panels?  If someone wanted to run the lines, would your board be able to support it?

And.. How many people would really care about more then 40 LEDs?  Would there be a chance for simplifying the wiring if the numbers went down?  For instance... The LPT encoder (other thread) I was able to change the circuits around slightly so that groups of 12 buttons acted like they had a common ground.   So for instance instead of 6x7 you could have 3x14 matrix... and have three groups of 14 where each group has their own 'ground'... That will probably be doable for most and will work well.   

Last... GOOD LUCK!   I would love to see one of these going!

[tetsujin]

The classic PIC16F48 has 13 I/O lines, giving you a 6 x 7 matrix.  This can control up to 84 LEDs.  Yes, 6x7=42, but remember that LEDs are diodes: if you reverse the polarity of the current, you can light a different LED.  Bipolar LEDs do this.

I don't think that's true.  I designed a LED matrix circuit not too long ago using a PIC using just an m*n matrix - I wanted to expand it to m*n*2 but the idea didn't seem to work.

Consider input lines used to drive an M*N*2 matrix of LEDs.  The "M" axis I'll call "x" and the "N" axis I'll call "y".  There's a set of LEDs at the intersections of the matrix - A(x, y) is the LED with anode on "x" and cathode on "y", B(x, y) is the LED with anode on "y" and cathode on "x"  (So A(x,y) and B(x,y) are two separate LEDs in the same place, with opposite polarity).

Now, assuming the outputs of X and Y are typical two-state digital lines, how do we light only A(x,y) while leaving all other LEDs off?

Basically, you set x high and y low.  Now, since A(x, y+1) is not to be lit, (y+1) must be high.  So how do you prevent B(x+1, y+1) from lighting?  (x+1) would need to be high, to prevent current from flowing through that LED.  But if (x+1) is high, and (y) is low, then A(x+1, y) will light up.

[ErikRuud]

Something like this should work for driving LED's in a matrix.  It does not have any provision for doubling up the LED's, but 256 led's should be enough.

http://www.codemercs.com/Downloads/AN1.pdf

[mccoy178]

Man I wish I understoood this stuff.  I have so many neat ideas, just can't do anything with them!  Frustrating.

[Trimoor]

There's really no need for special chips.  Use a pic and a multiplexer to drive everything.

tetsujin, I don't quite understand your description, but if I remember correctly, PIC I/O lines actually have three states: high, low, and float.  To light an LED, set one of it's pins to high, the other low, and everything else to float.

Also, look into charlieplexing.  It might be applicable here.

[cholin]

I was thinking about this all day.  If I knew a little more about what chips did what, I would be able to help.  Firstly, Trimoor will probably answer this one:  are all chips programmable at least once?  You do write your own code to the chip, right?

If so, then what we can do, is put some USB or serial interface (or both with a chip to detect activity) and from there, it will go to a chip that controls the matrix.  We can send simple text through the connection to a chip, and depending on the text sent, we can turn stuff off and on.  I don't see a need to *scan* a matrix because we're not reading information.  My idea is that a person can use a program (such as lamemame or whatever) to send a string of numbers through the serial port, like DINO said.  The main chip will read this string, and with the code we wrote into it, the chip will set some lines to high, some to low (Im assuming one side needs to be high, one side needs to be low).  This will cause a slight problem though wont it if we need to light up some LEDs in strange areas because if a line is already high, we can't set it to low at the same time, so therefore, we can only light so many at a time.  Im probably wrong, but if I had the money, I would be the first person to develop this.

[tetsujin]

tetsujin, I don't quite understand your description, but if I remember correctly, PIC I/O lines actually have three states: high, low, and float.  To light an LED, set one of it's pins to high, the other low, and everything else to float.

Depends on the PIC maybe.  The ones I've used don't have that, at least I don't think so.

[Trimoor]

The PIC line of microcontrollers can all be programmed many times.  You must write your code in assembly (ack!) or you can buy a ridiculously overpriced compiler.

Serial interface is trivial, USB probably isn't worth the trouble as it requires more hardware and computer drivers, and leaves out DOS.  Send a string of ASCII characters to the chip, which it interprets to determine which LEDs to light.  Send an uppercase letter to turn it on, and a lowercase letter to turn it off.  Or you could program it for larger commands such as all on/off.  All customization/LED configuration should be done at the computer end for simplicity.

The actual LEDs are either controlled by the microcontroller, or by a multiplexer.  The multiplexer will allow more LEDs, but it brings up the cost.

Scanning the matrix is necessary, but is done by the chip, not the host computer.  You won't notice a difference, but it uses many fewer ports.  This is done to eliminate ghosting.

Some of the PICs on microchip's site have up to 70 I/O lines in a $5 surface mount chip!  This might be the chip we need.  70 LEDs without a matrix, so we can use a common ground.  Or you could matricize them for 1,225 LEDs!

[tetsujin]

The PIC line of microcontrollers can all be programmed many times.  You must write your code in assembly (ack!) or you can buy a ridiculously overpriced compiler.

There's also SDCC, which I use for some of my stuff:  It's a little flaky sometimes (especially for 14 bit PICs - I think 16 bit PIC support is better) but it's useful.

http://sdcc.sf.net

Assembly can be tricky until you get the hang of it.  The whole deal with branching being done by "skip next instruction if such-and-such bit is set" is one I have some trouble with.  Otherwise, though, it's really not that bad.