NovaGemCDR™ Coin Drop Replacement Pushbutton LED Replacement?

[mrbones]

Ok, I bought one of these and I thought it was pretty cool. But, like an idiot, I accidentally plugged in 12V instead of 5V and smoked the LED in it. It's just an LED hot glued in place of the normal light bulb these Happ buttons take. I put a standard bulb in it, then my 5 year complains it gets too hot.

So, I need to find a replacement LED for it. I emailed Groovygamegear last week, but got no response. I went to Radioshack looking for one, but honestly didn't know what to buy. LEDs come in all kinds different brightnesses and I wasn't sure which one to get. They only had a few that was 5v, too. I need a blue one.

Can anyone help?

[Daniel B.]

I know Randy has had alot of catching up to do from the holidays, It took him about a week to get back to me on a total noob email I sent him for info on his products. Give him a couple more days, I'm sure he can help you get it figured out.

hang in there!

[Green Giant]

Try checking an auto parts store.  I know someone on here bought some designed to be plugged straight into a 12V signal.  If not that, then the majority of the led's at radio shack would be fine.  Just look for a blue led with a typical voltage of 5V.  Insert it in the same position as the previous one with the old resistor.  Look closely as led's have a front and back usually defined by a flat face on one side.  If its in the same position it could save you trouble of waiting for randy and shipping.

Shorten Those Links!

[ringram]

It's not so much an issue of how much voltage, but how much current. Buy one at Radio Shack. Look at the current rating and and current limiting resistor to match the current. (resistor in series with the LED).

Use ohms law to figure out what you need.

P= I * V

[Green Giant]

Thats getting too technical for him.  The standard blue led with 5V standard, possibly the super bright if they have it, is all you need.  Assuming you use the same resistor that was in the circuit, it will work fine off the 5V power supply.

You are right about the current and ohms law, but for practical purposes, standard radio shack led's will handle the miniscule current load from the power supply.

And remember, pumping to little power into an led will do no harm, its only overloading it.

[RandyT]

Sorry,  I saw the email, meant to reply, got pulled off task and lost track of it.

The problem is that the LED is not a standard LED.  It's the equal to 5 standard LED's.  It's also not easily user replaceable (normally, it's not necessary to replace it)

The best would be to return it for repair.  I'll send you an email with details.

RandyT

[johncl]

I sent this question to GroovyGameGear just now but I thought I'd post here just in case any of you know the answre to this as well:

I wonder about powering the led inside it. The site say it can be wired up to 5 volt directly, but does that mean the correct resistor is already in place inside the NovaGemCDR? I also wonder if I could wire this up to the LED pins on my IPac controller as they have some headers pins to control caps-lock leds and such - it would be an ideal place for me to wire the coin door led to if I could. Here is some info about the Ipac and it say I need a 220 ohm resistor for each led connected to it:

http://www.ultimarc.com/ipac2.html

Hope you can help.

[PL1]

The site say it can be wired up to 5 volt directly, but does that mean the correct resistor is already in place inside the NovaGemCDR?

Yes, any LED button with a socket and quick disconnects already has the resistor installed.

I also wonder if I could wire this up to the LED pins on my IPac controller as they have some headers pins to control caps-lock leds and such - it would be an ideal place for me to wire the coin door led to if I could.

Given that the power requirements for the CDR are 100ma @ 5v DC per button, you probably don't want to tap into the IPac pins since most LEDs usually only draw 20ma.

Since your project only has one CDR, you can use a USB power tap cable like this one or connect to the power supply molex connector.




Scott

[johncl]

Thank you for the reply. I also got a reply from GroovyGameGear saying I should not use the led harness of the Ipac (it gets power from USB or PS2 so I dont know how good it is to draw 100mAh from that).

I will hook this up to a molex from the psu then, just have to be 100% sure I dont hook it up to 12volt

[PL1]

Thank you for the reply. I also got a reply from GroovyGameGear saying I should not use the led harness of the Ipac (it gets power from USB or PS2 so I dont know how good it is to draw 100mAh from that).

I will hook this up to a molex from the psu then, just have to be 100% sure I dont hook it up to 12volt

USB spec for an unpowered hub port is 100ma (most of them can exceed that, but some will stick to the spec) so if you don't have anything else drawing power from that port, you are fine to run 1 CDR off it. 

With a powered hub port, you can run up to 500ma per port IIRC.

When you tap into that molex, just be sure to avoid the yellow wire.   

If you have a spare USB cable, you can make your own power tap like the one pictured in my earlier post and you'll definitely avoid the 12v.


Scott

[johncl]

Thanks again. I think I will get the power from the PSU. But while I am at it, I have bought some Logitech Z110 USB powered speakers (although the sound signal is through a normal jack), do you know if these babies can be powered using a normal HTC mobile charger? I know my HTC charger outputs 1 amp and that it can also be used as a Raspberry Pi PSU. You say that each powered USB port can maximum output 500 mAh so I guess these chargers would work brilliantly then? Just wondering in case I will want to use the speakers for some other stuff where I dont have a USB port available. (I also think the Z110 ones are too big for my project as well actually).

[johncl]

Good news, the Z110 USB powered speakers work fine on a HTC mobile charger. It would probably run fine from Samsung Galaxy charger as well as Asus Transformer charger, both also have a standard USB port on the power brick. Also the sound in the Z110 is really good for such small cheap speakers.