Making Illuminating horizontal pushbuttons with madcatz DC pad - question

[Hellfromabove]

Ok I previously posted a question on wheter or not illuminatd competition pushbuttons were sold. Well I came to the conclusion, with the help of rampy, that I need to install them myself which is going to take alot of work . Well I was thinking one night on how to connect the LEDs to a power supply when it hit me. The madcatz hacked controller that I am installing in my CP has an LED or its own. So I have a question. Couldn't I just solder wires to the LED on the pad and then split the wire numerous times and connect them to all the LEDs I am installing in the buttons? Would it send power to the LEDs and power them on? Also just to tell you all I plan to wire 10 LEDs on to it. I have 2 pads and 20 buttons total so I will do 10 on each. Please reply. Thanx.

-See Ya!!!

[SNAAAKE]

i dont think you can do that..like daisy chain all the wires to that led from madcatz pad because the pad wont draw enough power(unless i am wrong..anyone?)..if you really need to do that led thing then i dont see why you cant do erikrud's led hack..its pretty straight forward..did you actually read about how he did it?
its really simple and if you dont wanna use atx power supply(you dont have any spare?) then you can always use other powersupply(i am not sure what kind of others because i never actually did this myself so i cant be 100% sure but there are always other power sources)

[RandyT]

Ok I previously posted a question on wheter or not illuminatd competition pushbuttons were sold. Well I came to the conclusion, with the help of rampy, that I need to install them myself which is going to take alot of work . Well I was thinking one night on how to connect the LEDs to a power supply when it hit me. The madcatz hacked controller that I am installing in my CP has an LED or its own. So I have a question. Couldn't I just solder wires to the LED on the pad and then split the wire numerous times and connect them to all the LEDs I am installing in the buttons? Would it send power to the LEDs and power them on? Also just to tell you all I plan to wire 10 LEDs on to it. I have 2 pads and 20 buttons total so I will do 10 on each. Please reply. Thanx.

The LED on your gamepad most likely already has a current limiting resistor somewhere in the circuit.  Which means that what you are thinking about doing probably won't work.

You should do some research on the Dreamcast to find out what voltages are available on the gamepad port and how much current they can supply (unless you are using an adapter to hook it to a PC, which would be entirely different).  Then find out where on the cable those voltages are (use a volt meter or continuity tester if you know what pin it's supposed to be on) and make the connection where the cable meets the circuit board.

I would think that there is enough power available on a DC gamepad port to do what you want, but you might want to use low current LED's to be safe.  You also have to make sure you use the proper current limiting resisitors and hook it all up in parallel.  If you exceed the amount of available current on the port with your LEDs, you can kiss the port goodbye.

In other words, it's not as simple as what you have described .

RandyT

[Hellfromabove]

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Man there is nothing going on right for me today. If anyone has done this before please let me know. Thanx.

-See Ya!!!

[eightbit]

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Man there is nothing going on right for me today. If anyone has done this before please let me know. Thanx.

-See Ya!!!

How much easier do you need it to be?

You could always go with LED's that will work directly off 12v or 5v but those aren't near as cheap as buying a normal LED and resistor. Which part do you think is the hard part? Once you figure out the resistor and the LED all you gotta do is hook it up. If the guy at your local radio shack can't tell you what resistor to get, post your LED specs here, I'm sure somebody will figure it out for you.