Timeline for Substituting (possibly-proprietary) PC front-panel LEDs with commodity electronics?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 9, 2022 at 0:32 | comment | added | jimbobmcgee | Thanks, @Passerby; you've convinced me to give it a go - the pictures definitely helped! | |
| Apr 8, 2022 at 23:40 | comment | added | Passerby | @jimbobmcgee see pictures added. I'm not you so I can't give you a guarantee it will work, but the design is so simple, and the resistor value is high enough that just shorting 5v across it would only be 8.5mA. A higher value resistor like 2000 ohms would still allow the leds to light up and reduce the current even more in case of a problem. The only way I see you causing actual harm is if you somehow cause a dead short like using a jumper or soldering the red and black wires together. | |
| Apr 8, 2022 at 23:33 | history | edited | Passerby | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 308 characters in body
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| Apr 8, 2022 at 23:14 | comment | added | Passerby | @jimbobmcgee either of your two descriptions will work. I am 95% positive. If you measure the voltage with a multimeter (free with coupon at harbor freight) I'd be 99% positive. I'll add a picture. | |
| Apr 8, 2022 at 19:58 | comment | added | jimbobmcgee | ...or if you are saying I need two LEDs, where the +ve leg of one is soldered to the -ve leg of the other (and vice versa), then the resistor to one leg of that, plus wire and dupont; I might even try that. But then I'd need LEDs with the same 3.3V forward, 5V reverse? | |
| Apr 8, 2022 at 19:54 | comment | added | jimbobmcgee | If you are confidently saying I can take the bicolor LED I found (with its reported 3.3V forward voltage, 5V reverse and 20mA current), solder a 400ohm resistor to one leg, and run a bit of red/black speaker wire to a 2-pin dupont connector, and there is no risk at all to the £600 SoC motherboard I can't afford to replace right now, then I might trust myself to give it a go... | |
| Apr 8, 2022 at 19:54 | comment | added | jimbobmcgee | That's the voice of experience forgetting what it's like to have none. My principal domain is software, not hardware, and software doesn't tend to catch fire :-) | |
| Apr 8, 2022 at 19:34 | comment | added | Passerby | I mean it's just 2 leds, a resistor and wire/connector. The bare minimum of electronics. And no that led has a built in microcontroller that makes it flash automatically. You want a normal bi-color led. @jimbobmcgee | |
| Apr 8, 2022 at 18:20 | comment | added | jimbobmcgee | Hang on -- does rapidonline.com/… look like it might do the job? The combination of terms 5V, 3.3V and flashing (and it having only two pins) certainly suggests it, but I don't know for certain what I am looking for... | |
| Apr 8, 2022 at 17:57 | comment | added | jimbobmcgee | Frankly, if I can't get something off-shelf for this, I might as well run without it. I certainly don't have the experience or confidence to put something together myself. | |
| Apr 8, 2022 at 8:16 | comment | added | Passerby | @BartvanHeukelom yeah. Thats why, at least on their server boards, they have a jumper to decide which is more important to show. I know dell also used that trick for their external "status indicator led cable p/n HH932" that's used as part of their poweredge server cable management arms. | |
| Apr 8, 2022 at 7:12 | comment | added | Bart van Heukelom | Ah, so each of those LED should use the pin of their counterpart as ground terminal? That's a clever trick to save pins, if you don't need to light them at the same time of course. Hadn't heard of that before. Makes good use of their diode property. | |
| Apr 8, 2022 at 1:33 | history | answered | Passerby | CC BY-SA 4.0 |