LEDWiz, basic LED and RGB LED questions

[unclet]

I am thinking about getting a LEDWiz from Randy so I can make lights dance to the music being played in my jukebox but I do not quite understand everything about it.   I am not going to light up pushbuttons, but would like to have lights dance from underneath my cabinet (near the floor) if possible.  I am not sure whether I want LED or RGB LED lights on it as well.  I have no knowledge regarding lighting stuff or buying lighting supplies to make this work (ie: I am pretty much clueless).

I have some questions:

1) I believe I can connect 10 RGB LED lights to "one" LEDWiz since each RGB takes up 3 ports and one LEDWiz has 32 ports.   Is this correct?  If so, then there will be two ports "left-over", so can I plug in two regular one-colored LED lights each?

2) Where is the best place to buy affordable LED (one colored lights)?

3) Where is the best place to buy affordable RGB LED lights (three lights in one)?

4) Lets say I connect one RGB LED light to 3 ports on the LEDWiz.  The LEDWIz can then control the voltage going to each of the 3 ports, which will then control the color emitted by the RGB.   Now, if I wanted to have two RGB LED lights to display the exact the same colors, can I simply daisy-chain the RGB lights together so I do not have to use up 3 more ports on the LEDWiz?

5) Where do I get power to light the LED and RGB LED lights ... or perhaps I just need to power the LEDWiz hardware only?  Perhaps I can use the 5V line from the computer's power supply?

6) What is really needed for me to make lights dance to the music?  LEDWiz, LED/RGB lights and some software Randy made .....  is this it?

7) How do you wire up LED and RGB LED lights?   Do I solder wire to them or do they pop into some receptacle I need to get? 

8 ) Do LED and RGB LED lights get "warm" or "hot" to the touch?   Do I have to worry about burning something if the lights are mounted to close to something?

9) How do most people "mount" there LED lights in a cabinet so the light shines where they want it to?

10) I am looking at trying to get lights dance from underneath my cabinet onto the floor beneath.  Basically, have the lights shine on the floor where the cabinet is so the cabinet looks like it is sitting in lights.  How many LED lights would you think I would need to light up the underneath part of my cabinet .... just a general idea would be great.   I am trying to gauge how much all the supplies are going to cost me.

11) Do LED lights last pretty long?   I would hate to have to replace them frequently from the inside of my jukebox.


Crazy amount of questions I know ..... thanks for your input.

[Jouster]

Ok, I can knock a couple of these off for you anyway...

1) I believe I can connect 10 RGB LED lights to "one" LEDWiz since each RGB takes up 3 ports and one LEDWiz has 32 ports.   Is this correct?  If so, then there will be two ports "left-over", so can I plug in two regular one-colored LED lights each?

That is correct...10 RGB's to the LEDWiz and then 2 single clolred LEDs with the two remaining sopts.

2) Where is the best place to buy affordable LED (one colored lights)?

Not sure about the 'best'...but GGG isn't bad when you consider that you also get the resistor.
or...
http://superbrightleds.com/led_prods.htm

3) Where is the best place to buy affordable RGB LED lights (three lights in one)?

Same as above.

4) Lets say I connect one RGB LED light to 3 ports on the LEDWiz.  The LEDWIz can then control the voltage going to each of the 3 ports, which will then control the color emitted by the RGB.   Now, if I wanted to have two RGB LED lights to display the exact the same colors, can I simply daisy-chain the RGB lights together so I do not have to use up 3 more ports on the LEDWiz?

Check this out for general wiring issues for LEDs  http://www.theledlight.com/ledcircuits.html

5) Where do I get power to light the LED and RGB LED lights ... or perhaps I just need to power the LEDWiz hardware only?  Perhaps I can use the 5V line from the computer's power supply?

Either would work.

6) What is really needed for me to make lights dance to the music?  LEDWiz, LED/RGB lights and some software Randy made .....  is this it?

There was a thread on this somewhere, you might want to try a search...

7) How do you wire up LED and RGB LED lights?   Do I solder wire to them or do they pop into some receptacle I need to get? 

See link under #4

8 ) Do LED and RGB LED lights get "warm" or "hot" to the touch?   Do I have to worry about burning something if the lights are mounted to close to something?

They can get hot...however they are nowhere near other light bulbs.

9) How do most people "mount" there LED lights in a cabinet so the light shines where they want it to?

I used some perf board to make stands...also gave me an easy way to solder in the resistor...you can check the 'Irish Luck' bartop in projects to see mine...second page I think of the thread.

10) I am looking at trying to get lights dance from underneath my cabinet onto the floor beneath.  Basically, have the lights shine on the floor where the cabinet is so the cabinet looks like it is sitting in lights.  How many LED lights would you think I would need to light up the underneath part of my cabinet .... just a general idea would be great.   I am trying to gauge how much all the supplies are going to cost me.

Hard to say honestly...I think it will partly depend on what effect you are really going for...a daytime bright, colorful display may require more than if it is going to be in a lowly lit arcade game room...but that should go without saying.

11) Do LED lights last pretty long?   I would hate to have to replace them frequently from the inside of my jukebox.

LEDs last for years longer that a normal bulb...if they are given the correct amount of electricity, they can last 10 years!!


Hope that helps.

Jouster

[RandyT]

1) I believe I can connect 10 RGB LED lights to "one" LEDWiz since each RGB takes up 3 ports and one LEDWiz has 32 ports.   Is this correct?  If so, then there will be two ports "left-over", so can I plug in two regular one-colored LED lights each?

I just want to add on this topic to the good answers already given;

You can connect more than 10 RGB's to an LED-Wiz, but you may have only 10 individually addressable "banks" of RGB LEDs.  The drivers are rated sufficiently to power about 20+ RGB LED's per 3-outputs (controlled as a group).  This means that upward of 200 RGB LED's may be connected to a single LED-Wiz.

They are not all individually addressable, but a lot more than 10 can be attached and driven by the hardware.

RandyT

[unclet]

Hey Randy ..... so your response kind of answers my question 4) than ... correct?   You are saying I can connect multiple RGB LEDs together in a series and then only connect this "group" of RGBs to 3 ports on the LEDWiz.   I just wanted to confirm I understood what you said.

I just looked at your site and saw you sell something called a "RGB-drive pushbutton lighting module".   Is this the RGB thing I need to allow the LEDWiz to produce any color I want and which can be connected together to each other as a group?

One more question:  Lets say I just want to have blue LEDs "dance to the music" where the blue LED lights would be on at a very low level when no music is playing and would gradually get brighter the louder the music gets.  I believe this would have an effect of blue light dancing to the music.   Would this be possible with your software, an LEDWiz and just blue LED lights?   

[bfauska]

 I think that you would actually connect them in parallel not series, but I think you have the general idea.

[unclet]

So if I wanted to connect 3 LED lights to "one" port on the LEDWiz, then does "in parallel" mean that I would have 3 wires going into that one port on the LEDWiz?  A diagram might help ..... I would hate to wire this wrong incorrectly.

[headkaze]

I think the best solution for having RGB LED's dance to music for your Jukebox would be to get a thin sheet of ply, drill some holes in it to fit a bunch of RGB-Drives in a uniform pattern. You could have several RGB-Drives connected to the same 3 outputs so you could in fact fill a rather large sheet of ply using one LEDWiz.

So basically say you want to have 4 RGB-Drives connected to one output you put all 4 Red wires to Port 1, all 4 Green wires to Port 2, and all 4 Blue wires to Port 3 of the LEDWiz. Then just continue on to Port 4, 5 and 6 for the next 4 RGB-Drives.

Then get a plastic light diffuser to cover the sheet so the light from the LED's is diffused.

Next you get the LuminAudio Engine software and/or the scripts for FE integration so that you can simply run an exe to launch the different types of effects. You would also need to modify a PC power cable to run directly off PC's 5V power supply as the USB connection would not be sufficient to run them all.

An added bonus of going this way is not only could you have LED's "dance to music" but you could also run lwa's (LEDWiz Animation files) which will allow you have complex antimations of LED's changing color or flashing on and off in different patterns. Another cool effect is one I designed called the "Plasma effect" which has grandients of color moving around. It's one of my favourite effects using the LEDWiz, you can check out a (rather poor) video of it at the bottom of this page. Although the video doesn't show the 12 odd color patterns it can produce, it might give you the basic idea of the effect.

The only problem is the LuminAudio software is still a bit limited at the moment, but I think if it was expaned to play back random lwa's, have the plasma effect (which I could possibly help out with), and the "dance to music" all randomly changing (to music!) you would have a pretty awesome addition to a jukebox

[bfauska]

This is the basic idea between parallel and series. The + and - are for illustrative purposes only, I don't actually remember which side of the LED is which right now.  The way the electricity in the system behaves is quite different depending on which way you do it.  Parallel allows each component in the chain to get full power and series divides the power between each part of the chain.  It is actually quite complex compared to that description, but that's the simplified version.

EDIT: I looked at a few sights and it appears that I actually correctly drew the positive and negative.  This is one site I found]=http://www.quickar.com/ledbasics.htm]This is one site I found that at, and it does some in depth coverage of LED wiring.

[bfauska]

This is actually also parallel, while it looks different it is basically doing the exact same thing as the other parallel.

[unclet]

Excellent .... thanks for taking the time.  This helps alot.

[unclet]

headkaze
You stated "You would also need to modify a PC power cable to run directly off PC's 5V power supply as the USB connection would not be sufficient to run them all"

I have a spare 200Watt PC power supply in the closet which I can use in the jukebox, however, I am not quite sure what you are telling me I need to do.   I thought the LED lights need to be connected to the LEDWiz for it to control the lights.   Are you indicating one of the RGB wires should be connected to the PC power supply 5V line while the other wires should be connected to the LEDWiz screw terminals?  Please explain.

Oh yeah .... if I decide to simply use a standard LED light (ie: not RGB type), then I am assuming these could be wired in parallel and connected to one port of the LEDWiz only .... is this true?   I mean, would you recommend still connecting these standard LED lights to the PC power supply as well or not?

[superbigjay]

headkaze
You stated "You would also need to modify a PC power cable to run directly off PC's 5V power supply as the USB connection would not be sufficient to run them all"

Hello Unclet,

If you are using the 5V from the usb port, there will be a limitation on the amount of power.  GGG's ledwiz documentation state that the ledwiz powered by the usb should be able to supple 500ma.  most leds draw about 20amps, giving you a max of 25 leds.

If you use the 5V directly from the power supply (ledwiz, external 5v), then you are able to drive many more leds.
For example, your 200W power supply should be able to drive 2000 leds  (each leds is using roughly P=VI=5v*20mA=100mW)

I guess you should be able to borrow a few WATTS from your existing power supply (about 10 leds per watt).  So you might not need that extra 200W power supply.

A last note...
don't forget the resistor on each "control wire" going to your ledwiz.

the value should be:
(5v - led_voltage)/(led_current)

Since the current is fix, and you have a range of operating led voltage, you'll end up with a resistor range value that you should be able to match...

If you connect more than 1 led in parallel, don't forget that the current used is multiplied by the number of led...

Ex:
a led with V={3.3, 3.6} and I=20mA is fine with a resistor of 78 Ohms

I you connect 3 of those leds in parallel, they will draw 60 mA, so the resistor will be 26 Ohm (or you can connect 3 resistor of 78 Ohms in parallel)...

Anyways, Hope this helps...
Also, make sure you recalculate... I wrote all those number from memory 

Cheers 
Jay

[RandyT]

The only problem is the LuminAudio software is still a bit limited at the moment, but I think if it was expaned to play back random lwa's, have the plasma effect (which I could possibly help out with), and the "dance to music" all randomly changing (to music!) you would have a pretty awesome addition to a jukebox

Just a note on the LuminAudio software.  I started working on the automation features a couple of weeks ago (hard to believe it's been that long already  ) and made excellent progress in the couple of hours I was able spend on it.  Basically, all controls of the software can be manipulated via specific window captions, generated by external apps,  through a very simple protocol.  This also includes hiding, showing and exiting the control panel.

At the moment, all that is left to do is the LWA filename and input device selection.  And while not necessary for front-end integration, automatic storage and retrieval of the last state of the software. 

I'll look at what adding the "random" function will take.  Probably be pretty easy to add, I would think.

RandyT

[unclet]

I am confused as to how the 5V from the power supply is used to connect the LEDWiz and or LED lights.

I am confused as to how I should incorporate the 5V power from the power supply.  I believe the LEDWiz comes with a USB cable to hook it up.  Are you saying that I should "not" use that USB cable but instead connect the LEDWiz up to the power supply 5V directly somehow?   If so, how? 

Also, Randy's LED lights come with a resistor (I am told) but will this resistor be able to be used if I connect more than one LED in parallel to each other or must I buy different resistors if I do this?

I am electrically challenged so I am getting confused with all the electrical stuff ..... sorry if these questions seem stupid to some people (or most people  )

[RandyT]

I am confused as to how the 5V from the power supply is used to connect the LEDWiz and or LED lights.

I am confused as to how I should incorporate the 5V power from the power supply.  I believe the LEDWiz comes with a USB cable to hook it up.  Are you saying that I should "not" use that USB cable but instead connect the LEDWiz up to the power supply 5V directly somehow?   If so, how? 

No.  You still hook up the LED-Wiz with the USB cable.  But you will remove the jumper that configures the device by default for the USB power and get the power directly from the PC power supply for the LED's.  See the diagram in the documentation (available at the store) for more info.

Also, Randy's LED lights come with a resistor (I am told) but will this resistor be able to be used if I connect more than one LED in parallel to each other or must I buy different resistors if I do this?

Each LED, even in parallel, gets it's own resistor.  Multiples can be wired differently to use a lower component count, but the EE types swear that one resistor per LED in parallel is the best solution.

 RandyT

[unclet]

 ..... so when the LED lights are connected in parallel and each LED uses your supplied resistor, then everything should work fine?

Thanks for clearing all this up for me.   I really believe this hardware is going to make my jukebox cabinet special.   I am very near the end of building my cabinet and will then need to decide how many LEDs and such to order.

[RandyT]

..... so when the LED lights are connected in parallel and each LED uses your supplied resistor, then everything should work fine?

That's correct.  Keep the questions coming if you get stuck along the way.

RandyT

[unclet]

Thought of two more questions for you .....

1) I looked at your site and see the jumper you are talking about and how it can be removed if I am going to connect the LEDWiz using the 5V from the power supply.   However, your documention states "a cable with an inline fuse" is recommended if I am going to make such a connection.   Is this something I need if I plan to only connect the LED lights or RGB lights?  If I do need this to be safe, then what is the exact name of such a wire so I can go find one.

2) What kind of wire should I use to connect the LEDs to the LEDWiz?   Do I solder wires right to the LED wire or is there a trick to connect them?

[RandyT]

1) The fuse is for added safety.  If you develop a short somewhere, you probably don't want a ton of current flowing that could melt something.  I'm sure that advice is usually ignored, but it's a good idea nonetheless.

2) LEDs + resistors can be wired up directly with pretty thin wiring.  The 28ga stuff from ribbon cables works fine for the ButtonBlasters.  However, if you are going to wire them in parallel along 2 long pieces if wire, make sure it is heavy enough to carry the total current of all of the LEDs on that circuit. 

RandyT

[unclet]

Randy
What are the dimensions of the "RGB drive lighting module" PCB board.   I am trying to decide how to cut pieces of wood for my jukebox cabinet and the type of cuts will depend whether or not I can fit these PCBs into certain areas or not.

[RandyT]

They are about .4" x 1.1"   Overall height w/ LED is about .475"

I would be surprised if they didn't fit into just about anything.


RandyT

[unclet]

I think I am going to stick with the solid Blue LED lights only (ie: no RGB ones for now), so ....

1) How many solid blue LED lights can I connect in parallel to the same one port on the LEDWiz using power from my PC's power supply?

2) I know I should connect multiple LED lights in parallel when using the same port on the LEDWiz, however, there are two ways to do this (see pics).

The first way is to attach all little wires from the LED lights together into the same port of the LEDWiz.

The second way is to have one set of wires coming from the LEDWiz port only and then attach all LED light wires to this main wire set.

If I use the "firstWay" then can I simply use "thin ribbon cable wire" for all LED light connections?

If I use the "secondWay" then should I use a thick (18/20 gauge) wire going into the port on the LEDWiz and then attach each wire of the LED light to this thick wire using a thinner wire (like ribbon cable wire)? 

Which way do you recommend is best and how should I connect the LED lights so I do not melt/damage anything?

3) I noticed there is a LEDWiz controller you sell which has 16 ports for LED lights and 16 ports for a keyboard encoder.   How do you configure this type of encoder?  Is there software included for the PC which I can bring up and map the appropriate keys or is there a text file which I can create to state the current key mappings?   Also, can I reconfigure the keyboard encoder "on-the-fly" when required (ie: reconfigure it by running a BAT file or something like this) or does it only get configured one time upon bring up?


Thanks for the information .....  I will be buying stuff, just trying to figure out what I need for sure

[Green Giant]

"32 uniquely controllable outputs and up to about 500 Hi-Output LEDs per board (15+ per output, external power source required for this type of operation)"

1.  Looks like you could connect at least 15 led's to a single port in parallel assuming you provide the external power.

2.  That all depends on where the led's are going to be placed.  Either way will work, but do you want to run individual wires from each led to the ledwiz, even if so, the slots aren't that big.  You will need a single junction wire to attach all the led wires together and then into the ledwiz.  But either way will work as long as you can connect them in the ledwiz slots.  Do whats the least work for you.

3.  The ledwiz controller you speak of is seen as two separate things by your computer.  It will show up as an ledwiz with just 16 ports, and it will be a windows gamepad with 4 joystick directions and 12 buttons.  They are probably standard inputs always, but you could easily reconfigure the buttons using joy2key.

Why are you looking to reconfigure the keymappings anyways?

[unclet]

1) Excellent ... thanks

2) I assumed if I attached about 5 LEDs in parallel to one port on the LEDWiz and used ribbon cable (ie: "thin" cable) to attach them, then all 5 wires together would be able to go into the one port in the LEDWiz.   My real question for this point is whether using thin wire or thick wire would be better for the "First way" or "Second way" wiring types ..... or perhaps it does not matter.   I just do not want to melt thin wire if I have a lot of LED lights connected to one port in the LED Wiz.   I think I read something about wires melting from Randy (?) somewhere .... dont remember where though.  Thought I would ask to make certain everything was ok and no damage would result.

3) I guess I was more curious as whether the encoder could be remapped instead of me having to do this right now.   I probably do not have to remap it, you are right.