Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum
Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: FlightRisk on February 05, 2018, 12:24:38 pm
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I wanted to have many of my buttons be RGB led driven so that I could put the original colors on the buttons for controllers like SNES, X-Box, etc. Can this be linked to the game or emulator so that the buttons switch to their colors automatically when I pick a game or emulator? And even on games where they may all light up the same color, only the buttons that work with that game would be lit. Right now I use emulation station on a raspberry pi 3 and RetroPie. I will probably upgrade this to a PC based system later. I see I-Pac has controllers, but they seem to be regular LED controllers. Which buttons do you recommend. It Either the whole button can light up or just the outside ring.
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If you pick up an IPac Ultimate I/O and either ClassicRGB or UltraLux LED buttons from Ultimarc, you'll probably save yourself a lot of time and effort. The board can handle all of your inputs and the LED outputs (as long as you don't need to light up more than 32 buttons, which you shouldn't), and it's plug and play with either button since it's all from the same place. If you set that up with LEDBlinky, you can customize the colors of each button (whether or not they light up at all as well as color preference) for any individual ROM or by the emulator you're using (ie, all NES games just light up the two NES buttons).
I don't know how well LEDBlinky works with Pi, but it's quite easy to set up on a PC.
If you do a separate input board like an IPac2 or KeyWiz/OptiWiz, you'll need a separate board for the LED output...that's what (in my opinion) makes the Ultimate I/O your best bet for an LED button setup.
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For RPi: http://users.telenet.be/rgbcommander/ (http://users.telenet.be/rgbcommander/)
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I use an Ultimate I/O board from Ultimarc with the UltraLux RGB buttons on my arcade. While I am using a Windows 7 machine, I have tested it on a RPi3 and it does work. I built in the last week of December 2017 (so it's still pretty new) so my experience is recent. I'm fairly happy with it. I was, however, experiencing lockups on the UIO when using audio animation to make the unused buttons "dance". I would have to unplug the USB cable to reset it. This happened with audio animation and lots of rapid button presses (such as when playing 1941 Counter Attack). This problem did not occur if I did not use the audio animation. Fortunately, Ultimarc's customer support is really good and I spent a lot of time working with the owner troubleshooting and helping him recreate the problem. Eventually he was able to recreate it and I am currently testing a firmware he gave me that seems to have completely resolved the issue. I am very happy with his customer support.