Attention all electronics gurus....dummy in need of help. I want to mod this kit. Hook it up to the HDD activity wire to the mobo; replace the supplied green LEDs with blue. It says it works with 3 to 9 volts (the kit's power connector is for a 9v battery). My question is: Do I need the resistor that comes with the kit (or replace it with one more appropriate for the blue LEDs)? In other words, I'm concerned that the design of the kit doesn't take into account the resistor at the mobo connection for that HDD activity line. I know this is a hard question to answer; not knowing all the particulars--I can supply more info tonight perhaps when I get home (just tell me what you need to know). But any clues would be greatly appreciated. Attempting to place 9 LEDs in a circle around the main HDD LED.
Do not connect it directly to the HDD header on your mobo. Use an optoisolator (such as this one) to provide protection from your circuit. Pin 1 and 2 connect to your HDD header. Pin 3 not connected, pin 4 to ground, pin 5 to the - side of your kit's power supply, the + side of your kit's power supply to +5V from the PSU, and no connection on pin 6. Edit: I removed the diagram I posted--it probably does more to confuse than help. I haven't seen the kit, but if it has resistors for each LED, they're likely to be a bit large. You can figure the right value here: http://www.bit-tech.net/article/68/
Thx, linear. This is starting to look more of a pain in the rear than what it's worth... Not sure right now if there was an optoisolator with the kit, but my guess it doesn't have one. The circuit board that came with it is rather large too. As I recall offhand, there are no resistors for each LED.Maybe I'll just build the *&^% thing and make a toy for my daughter...
I haven't seen the kit but i got the sense from the pic on the site that that was a bigass board. I didn't catch that you had already order the kit, sorry. I don't think you can walk in to Radio S*ack and buy an optoisolator, although there was a time when you could have.
The board was obviously designed for easy soldering by someone with Parkinson's disease. It could have been half that size with no problem.
