LED-Wiz advice for newcomer

[viper221w]

I am an IT consultant based out of the UK and have been looking for a new project to start in 2010. I have always thought about building a arcade cabinet, however I really don't have the tools to build the cabinet.

I have taken the decision to have Craig from Turnarcades build me a cabinet, it will be a 4 player slim system running a TFT display. While doing some research into Mame cabinets I saw several Youtube videos of people using LED-Wiz to create multi-coloured LED control panels. I really like the idea of being able to control the colours of my buttons and joysticks so after doing some research I think I have come up with a list of parts I will need.

My 4 player control panel will have a total of 32 buttons, i'd like to purchase a mod kit for the 4 Sanwa joysticks so they can be illuminated also.

If I order 32 Electric Ice buttons complete with RGB kit from grooveygear and a further 4 RGB leds for the joysticks how many LED-Wiz boards will I need?

Looking at the LED-Wiz PDF doc it seems I would need four 32 output boards if I use RGB LEDS for the 32 buttons and 4 joysticks.

Given I am new to all this any advice would be appreciated!

[HaRuMaN]

Yes, you will need 4 LED-Wiz's.  Make sure when you order them, you order them as device 1, 2, 3, and 4.

[atomikbohm]

At the risk of taking this thread to a techie place ...

Is it possible to wire in some relays or transistors to decrease the number of LED controllers needed?  Such as wire each player station with it's own ground and put a switch (relay or transistor) on that ground to control when that player station lights up. i.e. 1 player game would kill the ground to player 2's LEDs.

The limitation would be that all player stations would have the same colors going but isn't that normally true anyways?

I've been kicking around this idea for a while but am hesitant to hook it up till I'm sure I'm not going to fry my LED Controller board.

So can anyone confirm the feasibility of this?

[viper221w]

If I run RGB LED's over a LED-Wiz can I get away with using the 5 volt from the USB port if all 32 outputs are used or will I need to run a wire from a 5v molex terminal?

Also I read you need an active x component to run more than one LED-Wiz board, if I intend to use LEDBlinky do I still need the active x control, if so is it difficult to setup?

[viper221w]

also would a PC running a 600 watt power supply be sufficient for running all the RGB leds?

[Bobulus]

Is it possible to wire in some relays or transistors to decrease the number of LED controllers needed?  Such as wire each player station with it's own ground and put a switch (relay or transistor) on that ground to control when that player station lights up. i.e. 1 player game would kill the ground to player 2's LEDs.

Well, if you don't mind having a whole set of controls have the same color, it would be easy enough to hook multiple reds (and their corresponding blues and greens) to just a single set of ledwiz terminals. No fancy relays required. The part that tricks people is that you're not hooking the LED to the ledwiz and ground, you're hooking the led to 5V and the ledwiz.

If I run RGB LED's over a LED-Wiz can I get away with using the 5 volt from the USB port if all 32 outputs are used or will I need to run a wire from a 5v molex terminal?

The groovy gamer gear website says that the LEDWIZ can handle up to 500mA without an external 5V power supply (500mA is what the USB spec says is the maximum amount it will output), and I'm sure a little bit is lost just powering the device itself. Each LED uses 20mA each (and the RGB LEDs use 20mA per 'color', so 60mA to light a single button white). So if you do one LED connection per output, that would 32 times 20mA or 640mA....which is more than 500mA. So by my math, you'd need the external power supply. BUT, that's only with all 32 outputs on at once. If you only plan to light, say, half of them at any given time, it would probably work.

[Endaar]

I'm running three LED-WIZs off of a powered USB hub. As best I can tell, there is no difference between doing it this way and using a separate 5V source. If the power is disconnected from the hub, the LEDs do dim significantly, yet with the hub powered there is no change in brightness regardless of if one or all LEDs are on.

Not sure where the ActivX concern came from; it's certainly not an issue with LEDBlinky. And a 600W PSU should be plenty assuming the PC itself doesn't require more.

Endaar