This is my current circuit. I have the 3 led pushbuttons there because fritzing don't have an rgb led button. I want the ring to be green when charged, blue when charging. Orange and yellow as the power depletes and red when it needs to be charged. Since I have little space, I want as many items to have as many duties as they canelectro mag
#electromagnet circuit
ivory idol
I'm assuming you have a microcontroller somewhere here to control the RGB LED.
dense root
No. The leds have yet to be wired and I would like to do it without a new board if possible. I remember seeing it somewhere where someone used resistors to do this with a bar graph indicator but don't remember where
ivory idol
Ah. Well, that's not impossible, but it's probably going to be quite a mess of op-amps and transistors and stuff like that to get the behavior you want.
This is because the logic mixes the colors in interesting ways. Like, the green LED needs to be full on when charged, but off when charging, and some variable intermediate brightness to contribute to the orange and yellow intermediate states. Generating that signal with analog logic isn't trivial. Red will be the same complexity, though blue at least is relatively simple.
dense root
That's why lightsaber boards are so complex. I thought it was just different resistor levels to turn on different lights. I guess I hot it confused with fuses
Does everything else look right?
ivory idol
I think the EN logic might be backwards... this looks like it will be normally on, but disable the regulator when the RGB button is held down.
dense root
I should note that the button is a latching type
I have it set on the normally open pin
ivory idol
Ah, then it doesn't really matter, except for which latching state is considered on or off.
The EN pin is active high, so when the button is closed, it'll be grounded and turn off the regulator.
dense root
The normally open runs to en and the common switch and led pins go to ground
Ah.so it doesn't act like a normal switch which allows power through or stops it. It just controls the device that foes
Does it matter if I have a latching or a momentary on it then? Cause its just turning the board on and off and reading power. The toggle on the right controls the electromag
ivory idol
Well, with a momentary you'd need to hold it down.
ivory idol
Yeah, if you want that type of color behavior, a simple MCU would be the typical approach. If you didn't want that level of complexity, another alternative might be attaching a little fiber-optic light pipe to the LED indicators on the boost board to let you see them outside the enclosure, if "low bat" and "charging" are good enough.
dense root
https://www.thecustomsabershop.com/PLI-Power-Level-Indicator-P267.aspx this us kinda the behavior I want, but on an rgb.
ivory idol
MCU, then, yeah.
dense root
I honestly tend to go with nonboard as much as I can so I font know what I'm looking for
dense root
Would something like this work?
Cause I may be OK running a number of these to do what I need
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYzoVyF3F2g this is what I was hoping to do, but with one rgb. I take it its impossible to donit so simply with jus an rgb?
dense root
@ivory idol would thus work? Or would it just end up being white when its full power? I may be wrong, but would this just keep adding colors?
Imstill looking fir a controller, but am having trouble knowing what to grt
dense root
https://www.adafruit.com/product/2078 https://www.adafruit.com/product/2077 would I be able to build the led control circuit on the protoshield and pair it with the power shield and get my above circuit
ivory idol
Catching up...
The GPIO breakout board doesn't have any built-in intelligence, so it would itself need to be controlled by an MCU.
With just resistors, you'd indeed end up adding colors... red, yellow, and white for low, medium, and high voltage.
If you need a small MCU, then something like the QT Py would be a tiny choice: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4600
dense root
This is the size of the Arduino shields compared to how much space i have in my project. Since its a printed item im a little worried about having enough space while maintaining its dtrength
dense root
Fritzing doesn't have a qt py so I used a proto board in its place. Am I missing anything?
ivory idol
It doesn't seem to have a way to read the battery voltage, for instance.
Or the charging indicator.
dense root
Honestly I don't know where those pins are or if I should place that circuit between the battery and everything else
Temporarily moved on to a switch issue I'm having. I would like the toggle to be center off up on and down temp interruption of the electro magnets power
I'm making an oculus adaptor that puts pistol adaptors on the controllers. With a flip of a switch the electro may turns on and the trigger pistol is placed into the stock of the support pistol an locks into a rifle. The temp interruption is to allow reload
if I can find a momentary toggle, I plan on using this https://www.thecustomsabershop.com/Momentary-to-latching-converter-22-to-16V-P1129.aspx to make one end latching
