The NEW Build Your Own Arcade Controls
Main => Raspberry Pi & Dev Board => Topic started by: squidget on May 03, 2017, 12:52:05 pm
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Hi all, first post. I'm starting down the road of building my own arcade control panel. I got a raspberry pi a few months ago and have retropie going on it and its great. However, I feel its time to take it to the next level. My USB joystick is just not cutting it anymore. I saw on another thread that someone had setup dynamic bezel lighting (http://i.imgur.com/jiwdd09.jpg (http://i.imgur.com/jiwdd09.jpg)) (changing by rom/emulator) and I realized I want that! They were using a PC but I found RGBCommander here to allow that on the Pi. I'm stuck though in the exact hardware to get. RGBCommander supports Ultimarc Ultimate I/O but the bezel light switches are on groovygamegear. Do these work together? Do I need another control board as well?
TL;DR I have a raspberry pi with retropie and rgb commander, I want the spectra eclipse lit button bezels, what control boards do I need?
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The Led Wiz from GGG works fine. I have one hooked up using RGBcommander and it's great. I was the one that helped Gijsbrecht test it and I can say he did a terrific job working to support it.
That said, LEDs are fairly interchangeable as long as you have enough current going to them. I imagine you could get the UIO, but its pricier. Led Wiz is a good option on the Pi.
Plus I have some basic Python scripts that work with the LedWiz if you need to do something really fancy. For the most part I imagine the Led Wiz will do all you need.
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Thanks mahuti! That is the information I'm looking for. Do you use the LEDWiz plus gameboard or just the LEDWiz and another board? I'm not doing anything fancy, just different colors/buttons lit for different games or emulator systems. If you wouldn't mind sharing your python scripts, I'd appreciate it.
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I have a ledwiz-32 (no output) that I use currently. I have a ledwiz+GP on order (looks like it may get here today in fact). I believe the two boards have the same USBid, so they should work interchangeably.
I've attached my testing script. You need libusb and python installed for this to work. I don't have the instructions for installing either off the top of my head, but neither is difficult to get installed.
In my script i call
LWZ_PBA(0,48,0,0,48,0,0,48)
LWZ_PBA(0,0,48,0,0,48,0,0)
LWZ_PBA(48,0,0,48,0,0,48,0)
LWZ_PBA(0,48,0,0,48,0,0,0)
Which sends all 32 inputs an instruction... either off, or the brightest color intensity available to the ledwiz (48). I'm not sure if you send all 32 using the Led-wiz+GP, or just 16. I would assume you send all and the last 16 are just ignored. That data that I'm sending just turns on lights. No sawtooth or other animations. There are other calls that can be made to the ledwiz, but as of today, I don't use them. That will probably change as soon as I get my new board in.