KeyWiz Eco Power Question

[ark_ader]

Hello,

While finishing my sub mini bartop, I got around to also finishing the soldering of my Key Wiz Eco, to much delight (as I didn't burn my fingers) but the marquee lights and the speakers are all battery powered.  And they do not last very long. 

Get me on Dig Dug and you can just forget getting anything productive out of me for the rest of the night....  So I need marquee and speaker power so see me on to the early hours.

I was looking at the documentation of the KeyWiz and on Randy's site and it mentions a +5V connection right near the keyboard connector. Woohoo!   

Can I treat this like a USB 5 volt? and hook up my marquee lights and powered speakers to it? 

Do I need to crank out a breadboard and put all kinds of electronic thingies (you can see I'm not an electronics guy) on it?

If it works it will save me a fortune in batteries!

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks

[Kaytrim]

Short answer, Yes.

Long answer, make you need to be aware of the limits of USB power.  The limit is around 500ma (milli-amps).  To be safe for what you need look into getting your power from the PC power supply instead.  If you have a spare hard drive power plug you are halfway there.  Typically the red wire is 5v and the yellow wire is 12v.  The two black wires are the ground wires.  Use a multi meeter to check.  You can pull a tap off these to get the power you need for your speakers and light.

TTFN
Kaytrim

[ark_ader]

Ahhh No can do.  I'm using a vintage laptop for my bartop. 

The harddrive is a 2.5 and if I stick anything into those pins its fried laptop for dinner.  I cannot be trusted with a multimeter.  Soldering iron yes anything other no.  Knives definately not! 

So the power has to come from the KeyWiz or its back to batteries for me.

The laptop is a 365x Thinkpad.

Any suggestions?

[Kaytrim]

Get a wall wart transformer.