Quickie Question on Electric Ice Trackball and Nova Gem Coin Pushbuttons LEDwire

[Charles4400]

A quick question about the Electric Ice Trackball and Nova Gem Coin Pushbuttons led wiring....

Is it OK to wire the 5 volt line from the LEDs directly to the the PC power supply red wire without the need for resistors?


Thanks!

[Charles4400]

Anyone have a quick answer?

[Franco B]

From GGGs website:

Novagems:

Connection:

The buttons have 2 wires attached to them. One side has a resistor at the end wrapped in heat-shrink tubing. This lead goes to the LED-Wiz™. The metal post was left long so multiples could fit beside each other on the terminal, so it might need to be clipped a bit to fit. The other wire goes to +5v.

No resitor(s) required.

Electric Ice Trackball:

Wiring the RGB OverDrive™ lighting module:

There are 4 wires connected to the lighting module. The one marked with red is to be connected to a 5v DC power source. The other wires, in order following the 5v wire are Blue, Green and Red control lines. If you own an LED-Wiz™, these would be connected to 3 outputs of your choosing. Otherwise, to hard wire a specific color, just attach the desired colors control line to ground. This can be done in any combination you desire to achieve one of 7 colors, or small resistors can be added in series to create any color desired.

No resistor required for red, green or blue colours at 100% intensity. You only need to use resistors if you want to dimm the LEDs to mix colours.

[Charles4400]

Thanks for the reply!

I have an LED WIZ which the RGB from the trackball will go into and the Nova Gems coin pushbuttons....it's just that instead of drawing the 5v power from the led wiz (which there is an outlet out for) and thus the USB device I wanted to draw the power directly from the PC power source (red wire from an available disk drive outlet).

I have alot of usb devices plugged in and was thinking I might not get full power just going through USB and thought it might be more effiient going directly from PC power.

However I'm not that familair with electrical components and didn't know if the LED wiz 5v coming out of it (if the led wiz was the same as or safe as connecting power to the leds direct from pc power supply 5v line....

I assume it ok then to draw direct from PC power and still hook up to the led wiz???

[Franco B]

I'm no expert and I wouldn't like to say for sure but I imagine you would be ok drawing +5v from a PSU molex and then returning it via the LED cathodes to the LED Wiz as the ground is going to the same place but as I say, I'm no expert.

I don't know how many LEDs you are using but unless you are drawing more than 500mA I would just use a LED Wiz plugged into the motherboard (not a hub) and use the Wiz's power and 'output' USB ground.

[Charles4400]

Well I tried both ways and nothing is lighting up!? 

Do you know if I have to have some type of application software to 'power' up and control things attached to the LED WIZ first?

Does it work much differently than the Pac Drives? With Pac drives the buttons light up right away on computer start without any software needed.

I have everything connected properly to the LED WIZ (currently 5v power being drawn from the lED wiz itself and then connections to 4 LEDs and the 3 trackball RGB wires....but nothing lights) I also tried direct connection to 5v PC line to leds and then to LED wiz but same thing...

Is this normal for the LED wiz to not light without some application being installed first or is this a sign of a bad LED wiz?

[Charles4400]

Nevermind got it working...you do need the software to activate it!

Thanks for all the responses Franco.. Appreciate it!