Quick Led-wiz question

[Shieldwolf]

I already have a Hagstrom Encoder for my machine which is a 4 person (44 buttons) 5 joysticks (1 four-way 2 eight-way) 2 360s ) trackball and spinner. Now I'm going to add led-wiz but to my understanding I would need a lot of them. Can I mix between the 16 and  32?

[Shieldwolf]

stumbled upon this http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=51353.0
in Powermame which I didn't find in a normal search. It only answers part of my question but at least it's part of it.

[arzoo]

Hey Shieldwolf,
Can you elaborate on what you want to do? You've got 44 buttons - do you want to light them all independently? Are you going to use single color LEDs or RGBs? What do you mean by "mix between the 16 and 32"?

[Shieldwolf]

Thanks for the reply. I'm just confused and want to make sure I'm understanding correctly.
Here's the breakdown:

26 player buttons  (1p=7) (2p= 7) (3p=6) (4p=6)
A 4 way joystick  with 2 buttons ( would wire this to the same  port as player 1 button 1 and button 2)
A track ball I only want to glow 1 color
4 buttons for that track ball (2 on either side for left or right handed people)
4 admin buttons
Credit and player start for 4players =8
Here it is


I was thinking of doing translucents for player buttons.
Blue nova gems for the track balls buttons.
Trackball will remain blue.
Does the led-wiz come with a few electric ice button? I'll make those the player start buttons.
an then I was debating whether to light the player credit buttons or the admin buttons.

I'm looking at anywhere between 2-4 led-wiz boards to make this work. If that is the case what do I need to make this work?

If I went translucents all the way,  I would need 135 inputs  if i want full spectrum and every button to do its own thing (which I'm probably not going to do this). That means I need 5 led-wiz 32s .  Can I use 4 led wiz 32 and then since only need a few more use a led wiz 16?

I was confused by this on the ggg order page "use if first or only device of this exact type" I wasn't sure if that meant I couldn't mix 32 with 16.

[arzoo]

Ok, you've got 44 buttons and the track ball. If you go with single color buttons (translucents), then you only need one controller port per LED. That would require two LED-Wiz controllers (yes, you can use one 32 and one 16). This will allow you to control all the buttons individually with variable intensities. If you only want to turn the buttons on and off (no variable intensities), then another option would be the Ultimarc PAC-Drive.

Now, if want your buttons to light up with the variable colors, then you'll need to go with RGB LEDs. In this case, the easiest option would be Electric ICE buttons. To light all 44 buttons with RGBs would require 132 ports (3 per RGB) plus 1 additional port for the track ball (which is not RGB). As you've already figured out that setup needs 5 LED-Wiz controllers - mega $$$! Yes - you could go with 4 32s and 1 16.

I would suggest only using the RGBs for the player buttons, go with single color translucents for the coin and start buttons, and don't even light up the admin buttons. I count 28 unique player buttons - that's 84 ports. Plus another 8 ports for the coin/start and 1 port for the track ball - a total of 93. That gets you down to 3 LED-Wizs! You'll even have 3 ports unused which could be used for the admin buttons.

By the way, the LED-Wiz does not come with any Electric ICE buttons - everything must be purchased separately.

Hope this all makes sense   

[Shieldwolf]

Good deal. I think I'm going to go with translucent with rgb card diffusers and ground down the top of the led for the player buttons over the electric ice. The main reason being when the led's aren't on I think the white buttons are pretty blah, but that answers my questions.