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Translucent Leaf-Button Lighting 101

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Oldskool:

Even 1 superbright LED per button works well.



Knievel:

Jakobud I'm no expert but I would connect a 1.5v(AA) battery to the LED leads, observing the correct polarity...



First try a single AA and if you don't get any light then try 2 together. If a single doesn't produce any light it's likely a blue or white LED that requires a higher voltage.

You should get enough light to determine the color. Then you'll know the voltage you need. From what I've read....
Red and green need 2 volts
Blue and white need 3.5 volts

This is for the superbright style LED's like I used.



Oldskool that looks great however the orange buttons are very easy to light. A blue/green button will barely light up that way, I tried it.

If you have a spare leaf mount you should try my method. I tested orange buttons as well because we were considering them on the FLYERCADE CP.
Even with the orange color there is quite a difference between a light shining at the bottom of a button vs 1 or 2 mounted in it.


penjuin:

i wouldn't trust anything except a multimeter or packaging. trying to trace a manufacturer may help, but is not worth the time. If you have access to a multimeter then have a look at http://www.metku.net/index.html?sect=view&n=1&path=mods/ledcalc/index_eng which can do all the work for you. I trust this calculator very much, and i think you should too.

Also, i know this is kind of off topic, but http://www.metku.net is a really great place to build small but impressive things to add on to your cab

Knievel:

I don't see anything on that page that will determine the value of an unknown LED.
I tested my idea and it works well for identifying the superbrights.

Sorry guys but this post wasn't intended to be a tutorial on LED's. I was more trying to show my method for mounting them in the leaf holders and what I specifically used so you could recreate it. I just know this setup works, I'm not an expert on them.

FractalWalk:

What color LEDs should be used for orange and red buttons?

And before anyone says "duh, orange and red", I am asking in reference to brightness. If I use a superbirght blue at 8-10k mcd, will they look outrageously bright next to the much lower mcd orange and red ones? Shoud I just put superbright white ones in the orange and red buttons?


Also, I don't see why kneivel's method of testing for voltage wouldn't work. As long as you don't make a large incremental leap in voltage, you should be fine.

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