does anyone have a set of BLUE translucent buttons and knob, or the whole LED + buttons and knob KIT for sale ???

http://www.hulkster.net/empeg/buttons/ doesn't seem to want to sell them anymore ? not sure ... just not getting any feedback from the emails ...

Yeah, I do too.

Brian is working on it. He apparently isn't sending any confirmation back on recieved orders, but he said he will e-mail people back when he actually has more available

Brian very clearly says, both in another thread and right there on the page you just linked, that he will only send emails to the requestors as kits become available.

Remember he has to hand-cast these things, it's not an assembly line. I have no idea how he does it, it must be a labor of love for him, there's no way he's turning a profit or even being compensated for the time he's putting into it.

Greetings!

Agreed. I don't know how he is able to do it. I am just glad that he is. Thanks!!!

- eagerly looking forward to my blue, amber and smoke buttons when available...

"Share the joy. Spread the love. Pass the soldering iron!"

aaaahhh thanks Tony for so clearly setting me straight ... for somehow I missed that sentence. Musthave been from all the excitment of looking at the AWESOME lit up buttons

Just got mine in the mail yesterday, and i have to restate what has been said before: The craftsmanship is excellent. I'm very very impressed with the buttons.... and the insanely small size of the components i'm going to have to mount. Now for a few weeks of practice soldering....

If you're planning on doing any boarding soon, you could always stop by my place and I could help you out with it. Seeing as how I've done it once before.

As I said, it's a pain in the arse, so I won't offer to do it for just anyone. Just a few select friends...

And yeah, those components certainly look a lot smaller in person once you actually get them in your hand, don't they?

Actually, i have two lift tickets i have to use before there's no snow left, so i might take you up on that. And yes.... i have no idea how the hell i'd solder that one component with 4 contacts on each side. That's just insane. I need a big magnifying glass.

One trick with the 4-pack resistor is to realize that you don't have to solder all 8 contacts separately. The ground side can be one big blob, only the side that goes to the LEDs needs to be done carefully.

Oh, and if you do decide to take me up on it, plan on it taking a while. I did mine in about 6 hours as I recall. Yours will probably go quicker, but no guarantees.

Greetings!

While looking around for ways of trying to diffuse the light, I found some T1 sized LEDs that have the resistors already built in. This company seems to be the manufacturer for a lot of the ones available on Digikey, etc. Would this be a workable replacement for the more solder challenged? (Note: I would not even try this, I haven't soldered anything in at least a decade...)

Interesting idea. Resistors built-in, huh? Brian, have you seen these?

Patience young Jedi.

I want to get the kits out as much as you want one. All the materials are finally comming together. I have the four factory colors ready to go, I just need time to cast buttons.

I've seen something similar. A couple of problems I see, one, they don't do white. Two, the big problem, the intensity of those are around 8 mcd, while the white LEDs I use are 780 mcd. I could probably come up with a way to attach a small resistor in place of an LED lead, that would go beside the buttons. Then you would only have to solder a solid piece of copper in place of the resistor pack. I don't know how much easier that would make things.

Hmm, OK, sounds like the resistor pack is still the way to go. I think having resistors on the sides of the button leads would be much more difficult and fragile.

Agreed. Just looking...

How noticable are the illuminated LEDs during the day ... say with and without direct sunlight?

The illuminated LEDs are barely visible in direct sunlight.

Your site doesn't have a pic of the resistor location prior to putting the resistor pack in place. Would you be jumping across from left to right (in your picture) with the copper strip which I assume would give X volts which with the current design the resistor pack drops to 5 or so?
I other words, the left side is supply voltage which you are connecting via the resistor pack to the right side which until then does not have power???

Correct.

It appears to me that one could connect all four on the right side to the left side via one properly sized resister to adjust the voltage to 5V. Is there a hole in the board on the left side (the 12V side) that could be jumped over via a standard resister to the hole that shows up on the right side? If so, then connecting the other three to that strip (via a copper wire) would supply the voltage to all four without the necessity of soldering the smt resister pack??? Yes? No?

It's actually 5v that runs the LEDs. You could rig up some type of resitor network with large resistors. That is what I was implying with the reisitors in place of one of the LED leads. I'm sure exactly what you are saying so here are a couple of drawings, one correct and one incorrect.

Correct



             +---/\/\/----|>|------+

             |                     |

 +5v  -------+---/\/\/----|>|------+-----  GND

             |                     |

             +---/\/\/----|>|------+

             |                     |

             +---/\/\/----|>|------+





Incorrect



             +---/\/\/---+---|>|------+

             |           |            |

 +5v  -------+---/\/\/---+---|>|------+-----  GND

             |           |            |

             +---/\/\/---+---|>|------+

             |           |            |

             +---/\/\/---+---|>|------+

On the empeg one side is replaced with the microcontroller, offhand I'm not sure which one.

Damn... when I tried to draw the circuit it would not use the spaces. In words then, since the LEDs are in parallel, couldn't they all be run off one resistor? I thought the line to the left was at 12V???

Just looking for a easier way and bypassing the smt resistor pack solder.

If the value of the individual resistors in figure 1 is R, then using 4R in figure 2 should work.

when I tried to draw the circuit it would not use the spaces

If you look at the BBS FAQ (the link is "BBS FAQ" at the top of the page), you will see how to post pre-formatted ASCII monospaced text using the "CODE" tag.

Brian, what he's trying to say is this:

Instead of doing this:

          |-----Resistor---LED---|

          |-----Resistor---LED---|

 --+5V----|-----Resistor---LED---|----Gnd--

          |-----Resistor---LED---|

What he wants to do is this:

                                      |---LED---|

                                      |---LED---|

 --+5V---Resistor (different value)---|---LED---|----Gnd--

                                      |---LED---|

So will that work? If so, what value is right?

The current through each LED should still be same, so current through single resistor is 4x current through each resistor in the pack. Voltage drop should be same -> R_single should be R/4 (a quarter of the value of the resistors in the pack)

Unless I missed something obvious...

This setup is more sensitive to differences in V_forward among the 4 LEDs though.

/Michael

Agreed on the math (a long time since EE). Just looking for an alternative to the SMT resistor pack by putting one standard resistor possibly using existing circut board holes (which should be easier than SMT by soldering on the back side like the LEDs go in) and connect on the other side feeding the LEDs. Is the voltage on the "left" side 5V or 12V?

Sorry, never thought to look in the BBS FAQ. If all else fails, read the directions.

Actually, if this works, a single SMT resistor in the same spot as the multi-pack resistor would be orders of magnitude easier to solder than the original one. Just make sure to blob enough goo on the LED side to cover all four pads together. I'd be happy to solder one like that, I could do those in my sleep. The only thing that gave me any real trouble was the closely-spaced group of four sub-miniature pads.

I will pull apart a spare empeg tonight and look to see if there are holes available. I understand about the blobbing. I think the technical term is Gob and Hope... Gob it on and Hope it holds.

Did you blob it on the voltage side? i would assume it would not make any difference on that side of the resistor pack.

Can't see why it shouldn't work. Differences in V_forward would lead to larger differences in brightness among the LEDs though, if you go with the common resistor option compared to the individual resisitors.

Anyone know how much power those small packages can dissipate?
(Not that there should be any difference from the resistor pack, but still curious)

/Michael

Did you blob it on the voltage side? i would assume it would not make any difference on that side of the resistor pack.

Yes, I did. Correct. When you look at the circuit trace layout on the board itself, you can see very clearly how it works.