Electronics Power Switching Multiple Devices at Once

Hello All,

I'm new to these forums, but it seems there are some fairly knowledgeable people around here and my electronics knowledge is a bit rusty. So here goes...

I am overhauling my custom MAME cabinet, and I want to simplify things by having a single manual switch control the power to several devices. One is the power to my external speakers, one is power to a fluorescent light and one is power to a pair of circuit boards (LED Wiz boards).

The speaker and light seem fairly straight forward as I'm just replacing their manual switch with some electronically controlled one. They should draw small amounts of power (I measured the speakers' switch at 50mA or so and the light's at 300mA). The LED Wiz boards will draw around 1300mA together.

My initial idea was to use 3 relays, one to control each type of device. I'm going to be grabbing 5v from my PC's power supply to power the LED Wiz boards already, and could easily go ahead and grab 12v to energize the relays. The relays should easily handle those loads without much problems, but I wonder if the inductive kick from the coils is bad for my computer's PSU?

Is there a simpler solution to this?

Thanks ahead of time for any input.

 

Put a diode in anti-parallel with the relay (so that it wont conduct normally) When you shut off the relay the diode will catch the inductive current.

Other then that, it sounds like you got it covered.

 

Yeah, I was thinking that I'd go ahead and use a diode just to be safe (not sure if it would hurt the PSU or not).

So relays are the way to go? Not transistors/MOSFETs? I just want to make sure I'm doing it the best/easiest way possible.

 

Oh and do I need to put a flywheel diode across each relay coil or can one protect all 3?