LED Strip Question

[rtkiii]

I was not sure where to post this so Mods can move to wherever.

I want to add some accent LED strips to my MAME Cabinet and PinCab.  I have a couple questions for anyone who can help/

1. Any suggestions for what to use?  I want to attach to the back of the MAME cabinet.  Then attach one to the back of the Pincab and bottom.
2.  I am hoping to add some sort of animation or changes for the LED strips.  Thought maybe do a flash when browsing menus, color fade when picking game, etc - Is there an applicaiton you can use to acheive these changes?
3.  Will only certain USB strips have the ability to integrate with GameEx and PinallX?

Thanks for any help and sorry if the post is vague. 

[Felsir]

I can recommend the Blinkstick Flex - it is an addressable RGB Ledstrip. This way you can colour each light individually. It has an USB connection so it was easy to set up. As far as I know there aren't any frontends that support ledstrips directly, so I made my own.

I have the ledstrip set up in my control panel to mimic the PS4 ledbar:



Note that in person the individual lights are less visible; this test was made under different conditions:

.

I also managed to get the Ledstrip to integrate with Ledblinky. However it is not possible 'out of the box'.

In all I'm pretty happy with the this ledstrip; it adds nice ebb and flow effect to my control panel and I change the colors based on emulators or individual games (Bubble Bobble for example has green colors near the player 1 side and blue colors on the player 2 side).

[rtkiii]

Looks very cool!  I'll take a look at your suggestion. 

I use LED Blinky for my buttons(white only, no RGB) and GameEx.  That works well.  I wonder if LEDBlinky would recognize the LED strip as well and then integrate into GE that way.  Hmmmm.

[Arroyo]

Looks very cool!  I'll take a look at your suggestion. 

I use LED Blinky for my buttons(white only, no RGB) and GameEx.  That works well.  I wonder if LEDBlinky would recognize the LED strip as well and then integrate into GE that way.  Hmmmm.

If you want an out of the box solution then you can buy an Ultimarc NanoLED to drive WS2811, WS2812, & WS2812b LED’s. Strips are easy to come by (just do a search with for any of the above).  It will work with LED Blinky no problem.  Only challenge is that each one supports 60 channels or 20RGB LED’s.  I used one on the control panel I recently built and will be using them in various places on the cab I am building.

[rtkiii]

So I would need a separate NanoLED per 20 LED strip? 

[Arroyo]

So I would need a separate NanoLED per 20 LED strip?

Yup

EDIT: to be clear that’s 20RGB LED’s.  You could get 60 single color LED’s.

[rtkiii]

Yeah I got that.  I would imagine I wouldn't need more that 20.  It is just going to attach to the back of my cabinet to provide an ambient light and effects.

Thanks for the recommendation.  Just need to decide what I want to achieve.  Simple color changes(which i can do with a $13 usb 5050 LED strip) or something that interacts with GameEx.

I know in my original post I intended on doing the interaction but as hours passed all I thought was - "Who is actually going to see this me...and my daughter?"  LOL - I moved about 2 1/2 hours away from all friends about 2 years ago so my mind is still in the "Hey the guys will like this" but I think only one of them have made it down in the 2 years.  - - SAD! 

[Felsir]

"Who is actually going to see this me...and my daughter?"

TBH, I've build a lot of these things for my own amusement. My kids do play the cabinet- but they don't care for these details. The best thing about the colored buttons is to make it easier to see what buttons are configured.

I just like it to create the effects and create the artwork in my frontend for the games that scratch that nostalgia itch. Having the ledstrip is just another component for me to tweak :-)

[rtkiii]

Yeah I have LED buttons(white only - goofed when purchasing) but yeah those are a must!    I did all my cab details custom for my theme and setup menus for GameEx.  Made some custom lists too for my daughter...which she loved(4 years ago)

thanks again for the advice!