Main > Main Forum
How to power some Illuminated Pushbuttons
markronz:
Hey everyone, I am in the process of building a control panel and I have a few buttons that light up. I was considering not even lighting them up at all, but I thought I should at least look into it since they're there. These are the buttons that I have here:
http://www.happcontrols.com/pushbuttons/5400042x.htm
I don't really need anything complicated like LED Blinky or anything. I just want the buttons to light up and stay lit once I turn the machine on. So the lights don't need to change based on what game is played or anything. They just need to be hooked up to an on/off switch along with everything else.
Could someone tell me the easiest, cheapest way to accomplish this? I've seen the USB devices out there for powering lights, but again those are programmable and seem to cost around $30. I just figured there had to be an easier way to supply power to these lights. Anyone have any cheap suggestions to me?
Thanks!
Malenko:
buy LEDs, wire them into the power supply. Wire in a toggle switch between the LEDs and the power supply if you want an on off switch. If you dont get 12V or 5V LEDs dont forget resistors!
Popcorrin:
The easiest, cheapest way would be to wire them up to your power supply.
Just use the bulbs that came with the buttons, no need to replace them with leds.
If you got the 14v bulbs that come standard with those buttons you will want to run 2 wires to one of the power supply's hard drive or floppy drive power leads and you will wire one of the wires to the yellow and one of the wires to the black(it doesn't matter which black one you wire to).
You won't need a switch because your bulbs won't get power unless your pc is on.
Malenko:
happ was blocked at work, couldnt see what buttons he meant.
splice it into the power supply, on/off switch optional. exactly like the poster above said
markronz:
Thanks for the suggestions! I do have one of the hard drive/floppy drive power leads available right now. I do have some more questions about how to wire it up though.
First off, is there a certain type of electrical wire that I should use for this? The only type of wire I have is 24 gauge speaker wire, would that work? Also, would I just use the same type of electrical connector as the button controls use? I would think yes, just want to make sure.
Secondly, if I'm understanding you correctly, you said to wire one black and one yellow wire to the buttons. Now what happens if there is more than one button? I have 3 buttons that I'd like to wire up, and possibly some day 2 more for the coin door. Is it possible to split a wire up to go to 5 different buttons? Or even 3?
Lastly, is there some sort of separate power supply out there that is designed specifcally to do this sort of thing? If so, any ideas as to the approximate range for how much they cost?
Thanks a lot everyone, sorry for my ignorance on this whole topic. I'm not too keen on all this electric wiring stuff.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version