gwjrabbit

Right. The whole point of the relay is to let something very low voltage/current control something wiht a much higher voltage/current. My 12 volt car relays will actually fire at about 8 volts reliably. Your 24s might fire just fine on 12 volts.

Those are $10 car starter solenoids. I have 6 of them. That one is at the "pop bumper" position. Underneath it is are positive/negative power distribution strips, and then the 15AMP 12v power supply for everything.

So, instead of simply running a wire from the LED-wiz to the resistor to the LED, you would run the wire to the terminal strip, then connect the other side of the terminal strip to the resistor, and then to the LED. The idea is to make your wiring modular. You can wire up your whole setup without actually connecting a single LED or relay. You just wire every output from the LEDwiz to a numbered terminal, Here's mine: Each of the yellow wires goes to a terminal. As I add stuff, I don't have to be messing with the LEDwiz board or anything. I just run a wire from the terminal to the relay/fuse/LED/etc. In my case I screw the resistors right into the terminals, and solder the other end of each resistor to the wire that makes the run to the LED.

Hrmm. There are actually a BUNCH int he guide, he just has the parts "open" in the pictures where he labels things. THe WHOLE big middle section of this is mostly just a terminal strip for connecting wires, to make it easier. The lower left is just relays to drive things like solenoids and gear motors. The top rigth is just a bank of resistors that LEDs will need, and the top right is the LEDwiz.

I've definitely ordered Arcade parts from Marco, but they tend to be a bit expensive, especially on shipping, in my experience.

Between Digi-Key and Allied Electrical, I have always been able to find an electronics part. Add in pbresource.com and groovygamegear.com and ultimarc, and you can kind of build anything.

One question on figuring out resistor loads. In the (awesome) guide here, the implication is that you grabbed a "good enough" resistor, rather than specific resistors for each of the forward-voltage specifications for each of the four emiters on the Cree LED? Should I be punching in the lowest of the four forward voltages and just using that? The highest?

Argh! Well, back to the hunt for LEDs!

OK, very cool inspirations. Sorry, I did dig through LOTS of threads, but there's so much here. I found someone in NY that has the LEDs from asia at nearly the same price: http://tinyurl.com/6fvwvxv And have found 4 car solenoids and a wiper moter all for abotu 50 bucks. Looking at relays now. Next weekend will be solder intensive (grin).

Ah! I see. Are those white Cree's? Do they blind you when playing? Man thats a cool looking cab.

AH. See. I have a ultrawidebody lockdown bar which drove the width of the project, but a lowly 40 incly playfield, so I have 2-3 inches of gap on either side of the field whether I want it or not. Has anyone found a good source for LEDs int he US that's not $25 a pop or whatever?

So, I ordered myself a LEDWiz from GGG, and am now thinking through my layout. First off, the Siemens 12v contactors and finder relays seem to be essentially unfindable for an average joe in the US. My current thinking is just to use cheap starter solenoids ($10 off amazon), and cheap EM relays rated for 5 or more amps (a few bucks each from allied), and I should be in business. Most of the releays I look at are under 5ms reaction, so I'm guessing there are no "gotchas" here I need to worry about. My question is actually on playfield LEDs. Has anyone mounted LEDs on the inside of their cab, like, above the playfield glass on the sides, corresponding roughly to where flashers commonly are in more modern tables? I've seen lots of folks with LEDs on their backboxes, but why not down on the playfield? Is the reflection just too much?

Is anyone using car solenoids? I know Hacker used some of those before the contactor rage started.

Right, I tried those (several hours of tweaking). Remapping off of escape and on to "e", etc. No matter what I did, I either have the "escape calls up the VP resume menu" issue, or, if I map away from escape, UVP stays running. All this goes away if I use the keyboard, so I get that its my Nanotech that's causing the headaches. I tried both the AHK remap and the Joy2Key remap system, and both had the exact same effect. Basically, no matter how I seem to cut it, if I have the nanotech sending "exit,", UVP never gets the notice to shut down. I really appreciate the response. Just not sure I know much more I can do. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling AHK/VP/UVP/This script, to no avail as well. Followed all the suggestions in the opening thread, googled my heart out. I'm calling myself cursed.

Another hour or so tinkering, and I've kind of given up. I can make it work, but not with UVP. With the old fashioned hyperlaunch, I just added "Joy8" to the top of the file for exit and everythign works, without having to involve AHK or Joy2Key or anything. Seems like whatever the old script does for exiting, the new script should be able to do too, but I'm just not smart enough to figure it out. I really appreciate the work you've put into this, and I hope at some point I either have a keyboard mapper that works right for it (like an iPac) or someone smarter than me figures out how to make it work with the nanotech board without a dozen hoops. Thanks again for all the effort and support.