It's actually surprisingly subtle, it hasn't really affected my gaming, I just had them laying around and I thought I could put them to good use. Sorry, I must have missed your name . I'm all for the idea of being able to change the colours to what I want. The likelyhood is that I'll get bored with purple and probably go with another colour anyway soon enough, so I may as well at least look into a solution which complements my inability to make up my mind.
Actually, the current color scheme on HP computers is turquoise LEDs and black/silver/gray cases. I have a few turquoise SMD LEDs somewhere. They are nice, but not very exciting. They look almost greenish white.
It actually would be worth just getting a single red + blue led, because that's all you'd probably need to make that shade of purple and would be cheaper, but now i see that you'd want as many colors as possible available, so stick with rgb. The reason you can't do strings of three and have individual control, is because rgb leds only have one shared earth lead, well the ones i've seen anyway. What you can do, is wire up each led like in my diagram, with a couple of maximum current limiting resistors fitted, so you cannot damage the leds no matter where you turn the vr's. The three vr's can be sticking out the back or whatever, so you can change the color as often as you want, and every led changes together. The 5v rail would be better suited, and the vr's need to be powerfull enough to handle the amount of leds you are gonna whack in there. As long as each led is the same type, then the color of each led would be very similar at least, so the lighting would all look very even. Differences would be from things like the mobo, psu, case, etc, all being different colors and reflecting light differently.
I need 5 in my front panel, about 10 or 15 in my case (I'll possibly make a strip or something), and another 10 or 15 going out to the back of my monitor (I'll replace the cathodes). Would it be possible for me to make a some sort of control box to go in a 3.5" bay, with three sliders/knobs for the colour and a master brightness slider/knob to control these lights, maybe with a modularised system where the LED strings connect to the back of the unit through 4-pin connectors? Ultra high detail technical drawing from Paint: And connections at the back like this: The function button in the first image would cycle between various preset colours, or even continuously fade through the spectrum, however I'm not sure if this is at all possible.
You can definitely do all that, but you'd need one circuit for each preset color combo, one circuit for the color cycling, and plenty of wiring. Unless maybe an arduino can do all this? I know jack about them so I guess the function button could be a rotary switch, so four knobs, and it would be a little easier to have some preset colors this way, but still heaps of wiring.
I don't really mind, as long as I have clear diagram showing me what to do, can anyone help me on this, and possibly tell me a good place to get whatever I need?
Besthongkong.com for LEDs. -They have pink too, but they are still expensive even there. Purple LEDs and UV LEDs are the same thing. It's just a fact of life. Futurlec is cheapest for electronic stuffs. Both companies ship internationally for under $6
what about something like this? the nobs are for the brightness of each colour and the switch is to turn that colour off, would be simple to wire.
That looks like a much more simple solution. In terms of that function button in my image, I would only want that to turn colour cycling on or off, not for presets. maybe this could make it a bit easier. Maybe I could use that idea, but have knobs that have the switch built in, like those ones where you have the push the knob in to turn each colour on. Maybe then this will reduce the need to have seperate buttons next to each one.
Could you wire them up in parallel? (That's what originally what I was thinking but somehow failing to realise I was thinwing of a differnet way of doing it). That way you can control each colour along one wire although I'm not an expert in electronics so I'm not sure how the LEDs would react to the resistance from the potentiometer so you might need a PWM controller. EDIT: Forgot my lovely diagram.
you could, by having a relay in parelell with the switch so that you could use a controller through maybe a parelell port to controll the lighting. you could probly get away without the on/off switch by getting the right resistor, that goes high enough to be at full and low enough to turn it off. Edit: heres a diagram
Those two diagrams are the same, where they are wired just like my previous single led setup, but all the leds are in parrallel with each other, which is what i was thinking , but there is a problem with not having a current limiting resistor for every parrallel led If you've got 10 leds that you want to supply 20ma each, then the vr needs to supply 200ma. Since they are all in parrallel with no resistor after each split, there's not much chance that the 200ma will be divided evenly. The other problem is that even with a series resistor restricting current to not go other the led's maximum, which makes all the leds safe, there is still the problem of evenly splitting the current so that every led is the same brightness, which will make noticeable differences when we are mixing colors using rgb leds. eg: if one rgb has red@10ma, green@1ma, and blue@10ma, the resulting color will be different to another led that has red@9ma, green @2ma and blue@11ma There's definitely a way to do it using just 3 vr control knobs for the three colors... i just don't know it yet Anyone?
5mm pink LEDs, cheap too http://stores.ebay.co.uk/HKJE-Led-L..._W0QQcolZ4QQdirZ1QQfsubZ8414070QQftidZ2QQtZkm Bought a few times from this seller, never had a problem. as for rgb led control, I'd use mcu. The laziest method would be using atmel appnote AVR136 - soft pwm, 10ch, controlled via RS232 (or with a bit of coding- with potentiometers).
That sounds nice Xlog! Maybe you've got a few links or some more info on the rgb control you mentioned? The best i could think of for controlling sets of rgb leds, is to have a single transistor supplying each of the individual led elements, as in 3 transistors per rgb led, and the 3 vr's are controlling each bank of transistors.
or you could get something like this and just use the LED. There is another purple 3mm on that site that does say Purple/UV but i mean its 50 cents... you could go to a parking garage and find that change on the floor. And i would say its worth a shot.
I think that something like this would only be used for status indicators, so they won't be very bright, not to mention they are expensive. Like I said, I'm not too bothered about purple LEDs now, more interested in RGB lights. I think a thread title change is in order.
well just figured id post my bit good luck with it mate and when your finished id really love to see the results
I'm glad you did. I'm really hoping I get this off the ground, but I would really appreciate a list of exactly what components to get and an informative circuit diagram so I can get started.
