the ever popular coindoor light powering q's?

[gnateye]

alright on my other cabinet i just hooked into hte 12v from the coputer to power the lights in the coindoors. but on cabinet #2 (a dreamcast cabinet) i dont have that option, so i am going to go with a 12v brick transformer 9radio shack style) but im a little confused (and wary) her's my questions:

1. can i just cut the wire before the little adapter and wire that straight to the coindoor harness?

2. my cab has 2 coindoors, 4 lights total, is one adapter enough to do it without extra wiring etc?

3.my little brick transformer says " output 12vdc 500ma " is that right for what i need? im unsur eabout that 500ma thing?

4. on the brick the wire coming out is black, one side has a a white stripe, i know this is to differentiate between positive and negative, but which is which? i feel a little funny cutting the wire, pluggin it in and using the multimeter, sound dangerous?

anyhelp from my gurus would be greatly appreciated i wanna get these lights up and running asap.

thanx gnat

[gnateye]

alright i got #4 figured out, the white line is negative. still unsure about the rest though....

[TheGatesofBill]

Why not just steal 12v from the Dreamcast PSU?

[MameMaster!]

I don't know if this will help you  

but if your cab is next to your MAME Cab....see my post on this topic that I just put up yesterday in the "Everything Else" section.

All of your troubles will dissolve in a dazzling display of lit coin doors......


The MameMaster  

[gnateye]

i dont wanna steal 12v from the dreamcast, as i wan this cab to be console independant, so i can switch out dc's or add a ps2 or whatever without a lot of work. plus i have the lillte brick transformer....

[gnateye]

mamester that is a nice solution too, but alas, they are on opposite sides of the room, plus im keeping thing independant of each other...

anyone have experience lighting coindoor lights with a 12v radio shack transformer??

[Amra]

It shouldnt be dangerous for you to use a multimeter.  If it bothers you, use the multimeter before you cut the wires.

If your using Incandecent lights (lights that use a filiment) then it doesnt matter which wire you connect where, and your 500ma Rating (.5 Amps) should  be enough for two 3watt bulbs or one 6watt bulb.   Amps = Watts / Volts.   This means that a 3 watt Bulb draws .25 Amps, and thus two bulbs would put you at .5 Amps (500ma).

[gnateye]

so how would that effect 4 bulbs that are 12v each? i figured out the multimeter problem already, now i just wanna make sure this is enough to power the lights.....

thanx

[Amra]

Depends what the wattage is, it will work, but the lights might be dimmer then you want.  If you get 2 Watt bults, you should be able to hook up all four without too much loss of light.

Make sure you hook them in parallel, forgot to mention that.

[gnateye]

i think they alreay are wired in parallel, im just using the harness that is already on there, crimping spade connectors to the bricks wires, and putting all 4 positives in one female quick connect and all 4 neg wires in another.

im not sure of the wattage that is in there now, they ar ejust the ones that were in there when i got the cab, we'l lsee how well it works shortly.......


gnat

[Howard_Casto]

People are skirting around the more obvious solution.  Get an old 486 power supply and place in the cab.  As they are at, you don't need a pc to power them up and it has more than enough amperage to power 4 bulbs.  If you are a computer nerd, you should have at least one of these lying around the house.  

[gnateye]

DONE! i will get some pics up tonight hopefully.

i was able to use the wiring harness that was ther already, i just cut the wires on the other side of the molex connector that links the 2 coindoors together and connected that directly to my 12v brick. lickety split. the only problem was one burned out light, luckily i had a spare, they are all really bright except for my spare bulb, but i knew that already. the 12v brick is more than enough juice, these babies are bright!

thanx to everyone for the suggestions and support, i was nervous for nothing, but i get a little wary when i cross into the 110v zone

gnat. i'll post in this topic when i get the pics up

[Xochi]

I used the transformer method proposing on my cab. It was trivial. Comparing to PC supply wiring: A PC power supply splitter at Best Buy costs $5 (versus like 7 for a dedicated 12V AC adapter) so the cost difference was negligible and this solution is much cleaner and leaves the computer/hardware swappable without messing with the wiring.  IMHO, the wall wart was a better solution for my cab than messing with the PC's supply.

[RacerX]

I went the Radio Shack AC adapter route myself.  I only have two lights.  Each one is a 6.3 volt, 150mAmp #47 lamp.  So I got a 6VDC 300mAmp adapter from Radio Shack and wired up the lamps in parallel.  It worked great.

[grafixmonkey]

I got my Happ coin door today, and noticed that the bulbs in it were exactly the same model as the bulbs in their illuminated pushbuttons.  I measured those before, and they drew 160 mA or something like that, at 12v.  (they are really 14v lamps I think...  ?)

Anyway, if you use LEDs then your extra power supply will work beautifully.   If you use incandescent bulbs, expect to be able to power 3 of them from a 12v 500mA power brick.

I bet you can find a power supply that supplies 1A  (1000mA) though.  I've seen them before.  That'd let you power 6 lights.

[gnateye]

seems to ne powering all 4 bulbs perfectly, it does get a little hot though, not alarmingly hot, but hot to the touch, of course that was after testing them on for a few hours and the brick is older......


anyways works fine, do the haps LEDs use the same voltage? are they swappable?

[grafixmonkey]

Just got 'em...   Haven't played with them yet, but from the site looks like the LEDs are 12 volt and the incandescents are 14 volt.  Not positive, as the illuminated pushbutton lamps (which seem to be the same part number) lit up great on 12v supply.

As for your power brick...   cool that it works, you're probably going on a part that can actually do more than what the company rated it for.  It might gradually go bad, and not live very long.  The internals might be a lot hotter than the surface since there's air in between them inside.  Nothing bad will happen either way, so may as well keep it in there.  

[gnateye]

i figured as much, its an old one i had lying around so its no biggy if it dies, as long as it doesnt cause trouble for the rest of the cab.

when i replace it shoudl i go for a higher voltage brick to avoid this in the future?

[grafixmonkey]

higher wattage or amperage, not voltage.  

Higher voltage will run more power through everything connected to it, which will be bad for the components.  (and the higher voltage supplies usually come in lower wattages anyway.)

Power = volts * amps

so your 12v, 500mA power brick supplies 6 watts.  (12 * 0.500)
In that case, that power brick will supply 12v all the time, and will supply anything from 0 mA to 500mA depending what's connected to it.  (often if it begins supplying more than 500mA, the voltage will begin to drop and it will heat up - hence the maximum of 500mA labeled on the box.)

What you have to do is figure out how many amps each of your components draw when connected to 12 volts.  Then if you put them in parallel, they add up the amps, and you see if your power supply can pump that much current.