Main > Main Forum
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?