How to power some Illuminated Pushbuttons

[markronz]

Hey everyone, I am in the process of building a control panel and I have a few buttons that light up.  I was considering not even lighting them up at all, but I thought I should at least look into it since they're there.  These are the buttons that I have here:
http://www.happcontrols.com/pushbuttons/5400042x.htm
I don't really need anything complicated like LED Blinky or anything.   I just want the buttons to light up and stay lit once I turn the machine on.  So the lights don't need to change based on what game is played or anything.  They just need to be hooked up to an on/off switch along with everything else.

Could someone tell me the easiest, cheapest way to accomplish this?   I've seen the USB devices out there for powering lights, but again those are programmable and seem to cost around $30.   I just figured there had to be an easier way to supply power to these lights.  Anyone have any cheap suggestions to me?

Thanks!

[Malenko]

buy LEDs, wire them into the power supply.  Wire in a toggle switch between the LEDs and the power supply if you want an on off switch. If you dont get 12V or 5V LEDs dont forget resistors!

[Popcorrin]

The easiest, cheapest way would be to wire them up to your power supply. 
Just use the bulbs that came with the buttons, no need to replace them with leds.
If you got the 14v bulbs that come standard with those buttons you will want to run 2 wires to one of the power supply's hard drive or floppy drive power leads and you will wire one of the wires to the yellow and one of the wires to the black(it doesn't matter which black one you wire to). 
You won't need a switch because your bulbs won't get power unless your pc is on.

[Malenko]

happ was blocked at work, couldnt see what buttons he meant.

splice it into the power supply, on/off switch optional. exactly like the poster above said

[markronz]

Thanks for the suggestions!   I do have one of the hard drive/floppy drive power leads available right now.  I do have some more questions about how to wire it up though. 

First off, is there a certain type of electrical wire that I should use for this?  The only type of wire I have is 24 gauge speaker wire, would that work?  Also, would I just use the same type of electrical connector as the button controls use?  I would think yes, just want to make sure.

Secondly, if I'm understanding you correctly, you said to wire one black and one yellow wire to the buttons.  Now what happens if there is more than one button?  I have 3 buttons that I'd like to wire up, and possibly some day 2 more for the coin door.   Is it possible to split a wire up to go to 5 different buttons?  Or even 3?   

Lastly, is there some sort of separate power supply out there that is designed specifcally to do this sort of thing?  If so, any ideas as to the approximate range for how much they cost?

Thanks a lot everyone, sorry for my ignorance on this whole topic.   I'm not too keen on all this electric wiring stuff.

[TOK]

I went with automotive 12v LED's for my bartop, using colors to match the buttons. These were like 7 bucks for a 3 pack when I bought them. They're wired right to the power supply. I cut the female end of a power plug off and old supply with a couple inches of spare cable. I cut the leads back, twisted the tailes of the LED's together and wired the whole bunch together.

They just come on when the cab is fired up. They're going on 2 years old with no issues.
The pics are old, excuse the messy workbench  but you can kind of tell the brightness in light and dark.

[markronz]

Hello again.   I purchased some connectors and wires to use for this, and I even have an extra power supply to use since I'm not sure that I trust myself enough to use the PC's real power supply.   I have a few more questions now.

1.   Is there anything that I need to do to the exra power supply to get it to work on it's own.   I haven't plugged it in yet, but I wasn't sure if it needed to "think" it was plugged into a PC, or if it's as simple as plugging it in and it will turn on.

2.  About what cables go where again.   I have 5 lights that I'd like to power.    So let me go over this, and someone please correct me if I have this wrong.   There will be 10 total cables.   5 cables I will strip and twist all together.  I will splice this big 5 cable deal with one of the black cables that would normally power a CD drive.  Then I will make a similar 5 cable deal that is spliced with the yellow cable.  That sound right?   Do you think I need to use more than one set of cables coming out of the power supply?  Or doesn't it matter and I can just use the same two cables for everything?


Thanks!

[TOK]

I think you just need to short the green line to a black (ground).

[markronz]

Thank you very much.   I connected the green wire to one of the black wires and now the power supply does start up once I plug it in, so that appears to have done the trick.

I only tested it out with one of the buttons so far, and unfortunately the light was not very bright, not very bright at all.   On one hand I'm excited that I got it to even work, but on the other hand, it sucks because it wasn't bright.

I did order some LEDs though, so I'm going to try to hook those up and see if they help at all.  I hooked the light up directly up to the button, so it wasn't like a poor slice job or anything like that.

[TOK]

Did you end up going with 12v LEDs? If so, are you using the yellow lead from one of your supplies power connectors?
The yellow is 12v, the red is only 5v. The ones I got were very bright.

EDIT... Fixed typo. Thanks Franco.

[Franco B]

Red is 5v not 3v.

As you said though you want to be using the yellow 12v cable. If you are using the 14v bulbs im afraid they will never be as bright as they should be.

[markronz]

Well right now I was just using the 14v bulb that came with the buttons.   I wasn't aware that the red was only 5v.  That would definitely affect the brightness.  I will try out the yellow cable, I'm sure that will help out immensely. 

The LEDs that I purchased are some 6v and some 12v ones.  I wanted to sort of sample them all.   They have resistors in them, so it's my understanding that I would be able to use the yellow cable for all of these.  The reason I would be ignoring the red cable all together is because if thats only 5v and the lowest LED is 6v, I might as well use the 12v line and let the resistor do its magic. 

Anyway, I will play around with it.   Thank you for the help!