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Hey GBFans,

How do I go about using an Afterlife style LED ring with a GBFans soundboard? I've got the GBFans soundboard and Wand lights kit, I just can't figure out how to do my pack lights.

Any suggestions welcome,

Thanks in advance,
Mike

I did something like this to run the home brewed bargraph in my thrower with an arduino.

on the right side of the board there's a couple spots to connect non gbfan electronics like a wand or light kit.

you could run power from that to an arduino and then use that arduino to power your LED ring.

That should work.

Thanks mate, that's what I ended up doing. To get the full functionality I had to wire the power up / power down switch to both the soundboard and the arduino, that way it powers up and down the lights and sound when switched. It's a little inelegant as I had to run a giant wire all the way from the wand to the soundboard in the pack, but it works.

mikesprops wrote: ↑June 4th, 2023, 2:08 am Thanks mate, that's what I ended up doing. To get the full functionality I had to wire the power up / power down switch to both the soundboard and the Arduino, that way it powers up and down the lights and sound when switched. It's a little inelegant as I had to run a giant wire all the way from the wand to the soundboard in the pack, but it works.

As long as it works right?
When my bar graph went out last year I arduinoed it and ran wires from y cyclotron into my wand for ALL 15 LED lights that I used to replace it. Because it was what I had and I was crazy. Inelegant works.

mikesprops wrote: ↑June 4th, 2023, 2:08 am Thanks mate, that's what I ended up doing. To get the full functionality I had to wire the power up / power down switch to both the soundboard and the arduino, that way it powers up and down the lights and sound when switched. It's a little inelegant as I had to run a giant wire all the way from the wand to the soundboard in the pack, but it works.

can you share any more detail here? what the arduino/ring setup was, etc.

I'm looking to do the same thing.

uurf wrote: ↑November 28th, 2023, 8:07 am

mikesprops wrote: ↑June 4th, 2023, 2:08 am Thanks mate, that's what I ended up doing. To get the full functionality I had to wire the power up / power down switch to both the soundboard and the arduino, that way it powers up and down the lights and sound when switched. It's a little inelegant as I had to run a giant wire all the way from the wand to the soundboard in the pack, but it works.

can you share any more detail here? what the arduino/ring setup was, etc.

I'm looking to do the same thing.

I'm currently doing a RBG pack but I'm putting an afterlife style cyclo-ring in it because... reasons. I'm powering the sounds and wand lights off the gbfans boards.

Here's how I did mine:
gbfans sound board wired to an off screen battery-


I wired the Switched trminals to power the light-


Unfortunately, I wasn't thinkin right and didn't realize till I burned out my Arduino Nano that the Nano doesn't like 12V of power. so I wired in a Buck Converter to step it down to 5ish V.


THEN it hits the Arduino (I've got my incoming power on the TX pin) all that powers the light(s)


Mine powers up with the switch from the GBfans wand board, but if you wanted to you could wire an on/off switch almost anywhere, maybe between the battery and board if I understand your original post.


[Youtube]https://youtube.com/shorts/I9qgD0IV4dU?feature=share[/Youtube]

[Youtube]https://youtube.com/shorts/nOxUwxbb8n0?feature=share[/Youtube]

How does the rate of fire increase the rate of rotation on the LED Ring? is it just timed activity in the Arduino?

uurf wrote: ↑November 29th, 2023, 8:00 am How does the rate of fire increase the rate of rotation on the LED Ring? is it just timed activity in the Arduino?

I don't have mine setup that way. Mostly because I was being lazy and wanted to use the spare wand lights board I already had.

So I just have mine timed to match the startup sound (and if I'm being honest I didn't do a great job).

I suppose you could write a bit of code for it that increased the blink rate based on how long the fire button was pressed, but off the top of my head I wouldn't be able to tell you how.

If someone else posts it though... I'm grabbing it