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| isucamper:
It's time for me to light my Happ trackball and coin door returns. I'm done a bit of searching to figure this out but I was hoping someone could double check my thinking so I don't blow something up. First, the coin door. My coin door has 14 volt bulbs in it. I'm going to hack a molex connector to get 12 volts from my PC as described in this thread: http://joelsgadgets.com/CoindoorPage2.HTML. According to that link, it dosen't matter which side of the bulb goes to the 12v and which goes to ground because the bulbs are reversible . I realize the 14V bulbs might be a little dim with only 12V powering them, but I figured I would see how it looks before replacing the bulbs. For the trackball, I've got a trackball lighting kit from Divemaster (thanks DM!). Unlike the coin door bulbs, this LED has +5V and -5V labeled on the connectors. I plan to connect these up to the +5V out and ground of my GPWiz40. Does it matter which goes to which in this case? Maybe I should ask if this will even work. I'm a total electrical noob here. |
| bkenobi:
Yes, LED's can only take power in 1 direction. The difference between +/- in DC is a relative value between the two legs. So, if you put +5 and ground on one way, you will get +5, but if you switch the contacts, you get -5. |
| Drakin:
--- Quote from: isucamper on August 07, 2009, 02:25:26 pm ---It's time for me to light my Happ trackball and coin door returns. I'm done a bit of searching to figure this out but I was hoping someone could double check my thinking so I don't blow something up. First, the coin door. My coin door has 14 volt bulbs in it. I'm going to hack a molex connector to get 12 volts from my PC as described in this thread: http://joelsgadgets.com/CoindoorPage2.HTML. According to that link, it doesn't matter which side of the bulb goes to the 12v and which goes to ground because the bulbs are reversible . I realize the 14V bulbs might be a little dim with only 12V powering them, but I figured I would see how it looks before replacing the bulbs. For the trackball, I've got a trackball lighting kit from Divemaster (thanks DM!). Unlike the coin door bulbs, this LED has +5V and -5V labeled on the connectors. I plan to connect these up to the +5V out and ground of my GPWiz40. Does it matter which goes to which in this case? Maybe I should ask if this will even work. I'm a total electrical noob here. --- End quote --- I had done the same thing with my cabnet as far as lighting the coin doors but I had used 12V 194 bulbs that are used for the side markers of an automobile....Evidently though the bulbs draw too many amps because it would shut down my PSU, so I went ahead and used LED's from ratshak and everything works great now. Just an FYI. |
| isucamper:
--- Quote from: bkenobi on August 07, 2009, 02:37:52 pm ---Yes, LED's can only take power in 1 direction. The difference between +/- in DC is a relative value between the two legs. So, if you put +5 and ground on one way, you will get +5, but if you switch the contacts, you get -5. --- End quote --- So do I hook the +5 up to +5 on the bulb and ground up to the -5 on the bulb? |
| Drakin:
I had used the 3.3V wires from my power supply for the led's, here is a site I used to get the pinout and voltages from the power supply. http://www.smpspowersupply.com/connectors-pinouts.html Juswt pick the correct voltage you need (being the +) any COM will work for the ground. Hope that helps |
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