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How to power some Illuminated Pushbuttons

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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  ;D 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.



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