The good and bad about a relay system and how to do it.

[mvsfan]

First of all i am an electrician/cctv man by trade. i know a lot about both.

so when it came time to decide how in the world i was going to power up my mame machine all at once eventually i decided on a relay system.

The monitor and the light on the marquee are both 120 volts.

basically what i wanted to do was as soon as the computer inside is powered up i wanted everything to come on at once so heres what i did.

I got a relay rated for 120V, 20A AC on the secondary side, and its also rated 12V DC on the primary side.

I hooked the secondaries up to a 14/2 Romex wire leading into a 4SQ Box with 4 120V outlets,
and i hooked the 12V switching side up to the PC power supply.

so when theirs 12vdc coming out of the power supply and going to the relay, the monitor and the light both turn on.

if the power supply is off and theirs no 12v going to the disk drive power connectors, both the monitor and the light turn off, it works flawlessly.

also if you go to the Start menu and select shutdown this too will kill the monitor and the light.

My only concern is that when the relay starts to go bad and click off and on by itself wether or not this will injure my monitor.

Ive already been replacing the relay once a year just to be safe. its not that big of a cost compared to replacing a monitor.

[King Nerd]

I've rewired a switch of a powerbar to the switch on the back of my cabinet.
I have my BIOS on my PC set to "power on" in case of a "power failure".
I have a regular fluorescent fixture (no switch on the fixture), so when there is power, it's always on.
When I flip the switch on the arcade it turns the powerbar on and everything powers on at once.
No need to replace relays. 

[severdhed]

Just out of curiosity, how much does a setup like this cost, and how much time does it take to get up and running?

you can get a smart powerstrip for around $20.  plug your PC into the control port, and all of the other ports turn on and off when the PC does. 

http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_00924031000P

i've had one of those for a few years now and it works great.  my PC powers up, the power strip turns on my marquee light and speakers.  when i shut the PC down, they turn off.  i have never had any problems with it.  i dont have my monitor connected to it, i just let it go into standby when the PC shuts down.

is there an advantage to building a relay system like this?  or is it just the satisfaction of knowing that "I built my own relay system" ?

[HaRuMaN]

I too use a smartstrip.

[javeryh]

I too use a smartstrip.

+1 more.  It couldn't be any easier to set up.

[mvsfan]

i forgot to mention something about it. ive also got the pc power switch wired to a pushbutton on top of my cabinet, and ive got the pc set to shut down automatically (no hold for 5 second delay)

so basically you hit the pc power supply button on top once, The Pc, Monitor and Light kick on, and it boots to a game.

the second time you hit it, the pc does a proper shutdown (important) and the monitor/light go off too.

the guy who said he set up a power strip with a switch on the back of the cabinet coming out of the strip and then set his pc to power back on in case of power failure,

i dont believe hes getting a proper shutdown as well.

if not, it cuts down your boot time a whole heck of a lot.

oh the advantage i see for using a relay like this, is mainly cost if you went and bought it, and also, i had this stuff on hand.

[bkenobi]

This setup is basically the same as a Smart Strip.  The only difference is that this is DIY and the the other is available retail.  The only cost for this is a relay plus the wire.  There is a link to this setup on the wiki, but the page was dead last I checked.  If you want to read about it, go to an archived version (way back machine has the full page as of last week).

[mvsfan]

funny, i thought of this independent of asking anyone. But that just shows me that this would have been a heck of a lot less work if i did do that or had i known about the wiki since someone already thought of it.

i think im going to spend a lot more time on the wiki here just reading before i post a new topic. thanks for clearing up the fact that i didnt think of it.

[Ummon]

i think im going to spend a lot more time on the wiki here just reading before i post a new topic.

Wow, magic words. Also note that the app attached (whether it'll be accessible, don't know) to be able to have things come on within a certain period of time after startup.