Pad Electrical and Lighting questions...

[KazeNoKoneko]

I'm working on designing a new homebuilt pad that will be lit with all the arrows and buttons I think my pad should have (6 arrows, start and back, with options for 2 arrows to double as additional start and back) aswell as lighting for all the panels. I've a few questions about the lighting aspect of this tho.

I intend to use relays to know when the panels are depressed instead of wiring two circuts to each panel. I hope to use LEDs to provide the light.

So here is my questions. I intend to provide power for no more than 3 or 4 of the LEDs at once. I was hoping to use battery power to avoid an extra cord, but I'm not sure how well it would work. What LEDs would work for lighting an entire panel decently? What kind of power supply options will be avalible?

Also wondering what the current on most PC/PS2/XBOX controllers would be to make sure I can use the relays. I really need to buy a multimeter sometime soon to test this myself...

All of my electrical information I have so far comes from my Physics book, and it's kinda vauge on alot of the things I really need to know.


Edit:
From my trig calculations I figure I need a 145 degree LED at 2.5 inches from the bottom of the plexiglass or 150 at about 2 inches. Correct me if I am wrong. It might be better to use multiple smaller LEDs depending on the power supply tho...

[DDR_finatic]

Hi, your lucky you have all of the money to be able to make a pad like that.
A good hint though, it looks and works much better if you use 4 golden dragon LEDs in each arrow. 1 inch and a half away from the surface.

You can ither use white LEDs and blue and pink plexy glass OR you can use blue and pink LEDs and use clear plexy glass.

I hope that's some help towards the ultamite ddr system!
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[DDR_finatic]

O ya, you can order Golden dragon LEDs from http://ledsupply.com/osram-golden-dragon.html
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[KazeNoKoneko]

4 of those per panel would add up to some serous cash that I don't have...

I might just have to use flashlight bulbs or regular bulbs and rework how I plan the switch. The thing about bulbs or lots of LEDs is the power consumption... I wanna try and keep this thing battery powered and have the batteries last long enough to be worth it.

Edit:
Any thoughts on http://ledsupply.com/elara.html?

[deM']

Well, 4 leds per button comes out to be 24 leds in your pad, and if you get high intensity ones, that will be ALOT of current draw on a battery, probably not a good idea. A suggestion i have for you would to do this, find a very old computer for dirt cheap at a tag sale or something, and use its power supply. With that you have the option of running either LEDS on the +5v Rail, or cathode kits on the +12v. In my opinion leds dont light up the buttons enough, so i opted to use (2) 4" cathodes under each button, like the arcade stage, i purchased 16 Lamps on ebay for 45 bucks shipped, enough for 2 pads.
Hope this helped, good luck working the lights!

[KazeNoKoneko]

Yhea, I was looking for a way to use just one or two LEDs per panel... especially since I am planning 6 panels. The cathodes seem like a great idea tho. I guess I'll just deal with an extra wire running to my pad, I'll try and figure out some way of making it look nice still.

I'd wager that a computer power supply will already provide the correct amount of power to these cathodes, so I won't worry about that part. But how did you set up the switch? I was going to use relays so I could keep just one circuit per panel, but I guess I could double it up if I needed to.

Might just have to build my pad normaly then add lighting once I can learn enough about it to satisfy myself

[deM']

Well if you read that last 10 or so pages of the Homemade pad sticky, you would find out that wiring them is our biggest problem. Theres an easy way to do it that involves creating another switch (if your using riptides design it would mean adding 2x as many screw contacts), and then theres a few hard ways, a couple of us are working on wiring this using pnp type transistors, while others look into relays, if you stay posted on current events in the Homemade pad sticky, im sure we will figure it out. ^-^

[KazeNoKoneko]

I was gonna read all of the homepad sticky, but I figured that this thread would be an easy way to gather some of the info together... and that maybe someone else in the same boat as me would be able to find this usefull aswell.

A quick question... what size cathodes do you use? Most that I am finding are 12 inch, which could be mounted diagonaly.

Either way, I'll go back and read the last few pages of the homepad stuff. Maybe I can figure out what I want to do from there

Thanks for the help tho, it's given me a ton to think on. Gonna head to Fry's later to scope power supplies and cathodes, and a comp resale shop for more power supplies and some wiring.

[deM']

I used (2) 4" cathodes, since the kits are dual rated it allows 1 12v source and 1 ground to light 2 lamps.

I ordered my cathodes from this (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5192533775&category=3666&ssPageName=WD1V&rd=1) seller, i emailed him with how many i needed and we cut a deal, a great company fast shipping and good deals.

btw i ended up with (4) Dual Blue 4" Kits [Total of 8 Tubes] and (4) Dual 4" Red Kits [Total of 8 Tubes] For a grand total of 16 lamps over 2 pads for $45 shipped

I made 4 of these little kits for each pad, 1 in each arrow


Sorry bout the size and bad quality, im on a 600mhz pc for the time being and dont feel like installing ps ^-^

[KazeNoKoneko]

The quality of the pic isn't that bad, it shows me some of the stuff I really needed to know. I'm having trouble finding 4" dual kits, but I'll contact the person you mentioned when I am ready to build my pad.

The thing I am looking at right now is still the method of triggering the light. I'm looking at relays still, but am also looking at diffrent methods of building sensors for the panels themselves. I have an idea forming using springs and a few brackets that could work and still be low-cost (and maybe even cut down on clicking noise).

Another question, what is the delay on cathodes? I figure it's fairly quick, else noone would use them.

[deM']

cathodes light up within i think 1/200 of a second, so there is litterally, no delay. lol, i dont think your eyes refresh fast enough to detect that small of a delay, its instantaneous