Zitt
Member
The last week or so; I've been working on a new method to edge lite the Etch.
About two months ago; I did a 6in scale test of a peice of clear bonded to the smoke grey acrylic and lit by some white LEDs.
The scale test was awesome enough to warrent a full scale build with some super bright red LEDs. It was at this point I realized I wanted the etch to be lit during game (red) and when the game was idle (white). So I went ahead and redesigned the Red Alert Audio PCB to "invert" the red alert for when the game isn't in progress. As I began simulating the "invert" circuit in LTSpice; I decided it'd be cool to also have a "Bass response" so that when the ship was hit by enemies; or fired upon, there'd be a suttle "Flash" during the game play.
From these ideas the Star Trek Ambient Lighting System was born:
However, please note that the above circuit is non-functional as a couple of bugs were found in the current mirrors which will require a respin of the circuit and PCB.
U1 / U2 / D3 R3/R2/C1/M3 is basically the same from the previous circuit. It detects the game audio and turns on the Red LEDs. Q1/2/4/50/51 make up a basically broken current mirror which is suppose to output 18mA (for normal LEDs) and 50mA for the high current LEDs I'm going to use for the edge lite acrylic. I had simulated the current mirror and in the computer; it gave me the 18mA results - but when I acutally built the PCB - I never got even close to the desired currents.
U2B and it's circuitry; become the "white LED" inverter circuit. When Red isn't on; the White LEDs come on after ~0.33 seconds.
U2D makes up a BASS pass filter with 2V/V amplification and a pole frequency of ~200Hz. When "explosions" or low frequency signals come in from the audio amp; the signals are sent to the U2C comparitor where is is passed to the peak detector of R23/C8. The effect has a decay of 1/3 of a second; so the BASS LEDs will only fire briefly after the audio goes away. The Current mirros of Q8/Q52 is broken but is suppose to to deliever 50mA to the high brightness Yellow LEDs.
U2A also drives the gate of M1 which controls SPDT relay K1. This relay is an aux port intended to allow one to drive external devices such as a CCFL for the Canopy (
). Common J3-2 is switched between J3-1 (in game) and J3-3 (not InGame). JP1 is a solder bridge to enable 12V from J2 to tied into J3-2 (common).
More complex? Yes. But also should give us a nice effect. I assembled the board; debugged it and did some rework on the back side of the board to fix these bugs. Here it is mounted:
And a Close up:
I haven't put the AUX port to use (blue three screw terminal connector). J2 is the bigish 2x5 right angle connector at the top. This supplies power input (12VDC) and current outputs to the LEDs.
Functionally; the circuit draws (with LEDs connected):
100mA with White (idle / not inGame)
300mA with Red (in game, no explosions)
410mA with Red+Yellow (ingame, explosions)
About two months ago; I did a 6in scale test of a peice of clear bonded to the smoke grey acrylic and lit by some white LEDs.
The scale test was awesome enough to warrent a full scale build with some super bright red LEDs. It was at this point I realized I wanted the etch to be lit during game (red) and when the game was idle (white). So I went ahead and redesigned the Red Alert Audio PCB to "invert" the red alert for when the game isn't in progress. As I began simulating the "invert" circuit in LTSpice; I decided it'd be cool to also have a "Bass response" so that when the ship was hit by enemies; or fired upon, there'd be a suttle "Flash" during the game play.
From these ideas the Star Trek Ambient Lighting System was born:
However, please note that the above circuit is non-functional as a couple of bugs were found in the current mirrors which will require a respin of the circuit and PCB.
U1 / U2 / D3 R3/R2/C1/M3 is basically the same from the previous circuit. It detects the game audio and turns on the Red LEDs. Q1/2/4/50/51 make up a basically broken current mirror which is suppose to output 18mA (for normal LEDs) and 50mA for the high current LEDs I'm going to use for the edge lite acrylic. I had simulated the current mirror and in the computer; it gave me the 18mA results - but when I acutally built the PCB - I never got even close to the desired currents.
U2B and it's circuitry; become the "white LED" inverter circuit. When Red isn't on; the White LEDs come on after ~0.33 seconds.
U2D makes up a BASS pass filter with 2V/V amplification and a pole frequency of ~200Hz. When "explosions" or low frequency signals come in from the audio amp; the signals are sent to the U2C comparitor where is is passed to the peak detector of R23/C8. The effect has a decay of 1/3 of a second; so the BASS LEDs will only fire briefly after the audio goes away. The Current mirros of Q8/Q52 is broken but is suppose to to deliever 50mA to the high brightness Yellow LEDs.
U2A also drives the gate of M1 which controls SPDT relay K1. This relay is an aux port intended to allow one to drive external devices such as a CCFL for the Canopy (
). Common J3-2 is switched between J3-1 (in game) and J3-3 (not InGame). JP1 is a solder bridge to enable 12V from J2 to tied into J3-2 (common). More complex? Yes. But also should give us a nice effect. I assembled the board; debugged it and did some rework on the back side of the board to fix these bugs. Here it is mounted:
And a Close up:
I haven't put the AUX port to use (blue three screw terminal connector). J2 is the bigish 2x5 right angle connector at the top. This supplies power input (12VDC) and current outputs to the LEDs.
Functionally; the circuit draws (with LEDs connected):
100mA with White (idle / not inGame)
300mA with Red (in game, no explosions)
410mA with Red+Yellow (ingame, explosions)
