Lighting orange buttons...

[bleargh]

Need some input from someone here...

I'm building a CP that's got red/orange/yellow PBs on it along with some white control PBs.  They're Happ standard, not transparent buttons.

Wanted to light the buttons and was thinking of picking up a set of ButtonBlaster LEDs from GGG to backlight them.  My plan at this point was to match the LEDs to the colour of the buttons, for better effect (as opposed to just lighting them all with "white").

However... there's no "orange". 

Any idea whether I'd get better results using "red", "yellow", or "white" to backlight these suckers?

[Grasshopper]

You can buy orange buttons from other sources.

I'd suggest you try Ponyboy or shawnzilla (www.fxbuttons.com) first.

Edit: I think I misread your post. You're saying you cannot buy orange LEDs right?

IIRC GGG sells tri-colour LEDs (basically a red, blue and green LED combined) that can be set to any colour you want.

[bleargh]

I've already -got- the buttons; don't need any more...

But yes, GGG doesn't have any orange Button Blasters listed on their site, so I was hoping to find out if I'd be better lighting the buttons with red/yellow/white LEDs instead.

As for the tri-colour LEDs, I think you're referring to the "RGB Drive" module.  Would be great, except that I'd then need an LED-Wiz to go into this cabinet.  From chatting with RandyT via e-mail, though, there isn't (yet) any Linux support for the LED-Wiz.  I'd be happy to write the app to drive this under Linux, but would want RandyT's blessing on it; I understand that he has concerns about open source drivers, but would be willing to sign NDA and provide GGG with a binary distributable.  All I'd need is, uh, an LED-Wiz, RandyTs blessing, and some notes on the protocol. 

[Encryptor]

There are orange leds on the fxbuttons site above.

Encryptor

[Knievel]

I lit some regular orange buttons on the Flyercade machine:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=30403.msg338924#msg338924

They were done with white LED's, I tried the amber/orange ones and they didn't light up as well.

I actually prefer the look of these over the translucent orange buttons. They give off a cool subtle glow that lights up the area around the cabinet.

[bleargh]

Knievel, thanks for that pointer and tidbit of info, that's EXACTLY what I was looking for...

Considering that, I might just buy a whack of white LEDs and do them all in white.  Then again, considering how cheap LEDs are, maybe I'll just buy a whack of white ones and a whack of red/yellow ones too; if I don't like the look with coloured LEDs I'll have white ones to switch to.  At least I've got somebody elses word to go on that lighting them with white LEDs isn't going to just look like crap...

Also glad to see that someone didn't like the look of the translucent buttons; at least I'm not the only one.  I'm more interested in the subtle glow in the buttons as opposed to something blindingly bright.

Do you remember what brightness of LEDs did you use in the Flyercade? 

[rockin_rick]

If they are too bright, just put a larger resistor on them to limit the current more and they will not be as bright.  Seems like you could get a translucent to subtly glow...  Maybe you want a different look when the led is off, though.  With the non-translucents, I think the issue is how well the glow or light is distributed across the face of the button.  Is it just a bright spot, with the sides of the button not lit?  If so, then a translucent may look better.   

Rick

[bleargh]

Not too concerned about them being too bright, more concerned about them not being bright enough to even show through the buttons... I've got a bunch of red buttons on the CP and they're pretty thick.  My "LED Lenser" flashlight looks awesome shining up through those buttons, but I haven't been able to figure out how many MCD its pushing.  It just hurts to look at it, its that bright.

As for distributing the glow across the face, I'm planning on getting LEDs with a slightly wider angle (30-45 degree) so that the spread is a little wider than the 10-15 degree LEDs that seem really standard at the electronic shops I keep checking into.

[Knievel]

Do you remember what brightness of LEDs did you use in the Flyercade? 

I think they were 4000mcd, not sure of the viewing angle.

The whole face of the button lights up nice. Hard to get a picture of what they really look like. Those pictures were taken in the daylight, they look much cooler in a dark room.

[rockin_rick]

Typically with LEDs, as brightness goes up, viewing angle goes down.  It may take some searching around to find specs on a LED with both high brightness and wide viewing angle.  I get the impression that GGG's new novagem buttons have an LED like this in them.  Not sure though...

Rick

[Anubis_au]

Can someone post pics of regular red buttons being lit?

And, are people lighting these buttons with a single LED facing up, or two horizontal LEDs like what Knievel did in the Neon MAME?

[bleargh]

Only 4000mcd?  Hmm... I thought they would've been brighter than that.... was at a local electronics shop recently and tried shining a 10,000 mcd LED into the bottom of a red button while I was there and wasn't terribly impressed with the results.  Was a pretty bright room and a sunny day, so it could've just been my eyes not having adjusted for it.

Does anyone know how many MCDs the ButtonBlasters are pushing?  Only post I've seen from RandyT on it was saying that they were "in the thousands".  Superbrightleds.com has an 8000mcd w/45 degree angle, as well as 18000mcd w/30 degree angle, both of which look suitable.  Curious for comparison, though; the ones from Superbrightleds are twice the price as the ones from GGG.

If your shots were with 4000mcds, though, then any of the above should be suitable for my purposes.  Cool!