Hey i'm a noob to modding but not to electronics. i had an old battle ship type game taht i took apart. when ever u got hit a little acrlic etched with a small explosin would light up . The explosian sort of looked like a heartbeat moniter . so i want to take out the old green Led and put in this little explosian / heartbeat. since i am a noob to all of this are there any tips i should be aware of) just post to let me know! thanks in advance for you welcomes)
erm sounds quite simple really just cut out the piece of acrylic then cut a hole in the front of your PC, then solder the led from the explosion to the HDD activity LED cable first taking off the green LED then ur go!!
Can i do a bit of Thread hijack here still on the HDD activity If i was to string up say 5 leds how would i get them to all flash at the same time [for the HDD activity] would i need to make some sort of cercuit Thanks
nick, cpemma's site has a schem that does just about the same thing (Scroll down to "blinking LEDs"). MDK, you'll most likely need to use an optoisolator. An optoisolator is a IC package that's an IR LED and a phototransistor. HD signal from mobo drives LED, and the light from the LED acts as the base for the transistor inside. Besides that, you'll need two resistors, one to set the input voltage for the LED and another to set the output voltage on the transistor. I'm sure someone else can recommend a specific p/n to use.
They would need too much current from the header most likely. I don't see where in that link driving a fair number of LEDs appears, but the short answer is some sort of transistor based circuitry. The transistor can be thoght of as a sort of current booster. For situations like this, where there is sensitive equipmene, and only an on and off, I like opticouplers. But the trick is to get one that can handle the current from all the parallel LEDs. But current is not an issue if you were to use a 12 volt line (the opticoupler's output side is wited to the 12 volt rail). You could put a bunch of LEDs in series. Say I had a red LED wth a forward voltage of 1.5 volts, and can handle a max continuous current of 20mA. I could string 12/1.5=8. But for the sake of safety to the LEDs and 12 volt line, I'd use 6 or 7. 6*1.5=9volts. I could then plug this as the 'LED's forward voltage' into Linear's LED calculator. The current is still 20mA, and this is the reason for doing the circuit in series with a larger voltage
Picture? whypick1, i dont want the light to blink like a heart beat i just want to wire the two new led to where the old led was.(the LED i want to swich the new one for is the one that blinks when your computer is "thinking") but i dont know about voltage or any of that. is there like a site for wiring LEDs for noob dummies? Also i think pictures would help can i post pics i dont know? if so then how?
Remeber we do have an ELECTRONICS forum for questions like this. Youll get alot better response with a well placed thread.... Welcome to the forums though. Enjoy your stay..... moved
OK I FINISHED It looks kin of raffy but for my first mod i think i did pretty well i might get pics in a little while.
or you can connect the ground wire of the LED(s) to pin 39 on the IDE cable. You could probably solder it on the back of the motherboard. Then hook up your LED's to power and it should work fine.
RE: The thread hijack You need to use an Optoisolator, Something like the 4N27 then just use the feed if the psu for power
