Saturday, October 10, 2015

Parts arriving

So I know I just posted about ordering parts, but in reality I started ordering about two weeks ago.  Parts are coming in fast at this point.  Here's all that is left that I have yet to receive:

5 position rotary switch
The MF-A04 knobs
The rotary potentiometers
The red, green, and yellow arcade buttons.

Everything else has arrived, and the above items are actually in transit.  Kudos to all the suppliers - so far everything has come very quickly.  The only hiccup was in the LEDs that were accidentally sent to the wrong town in Ohio by USPS, who then caught their error and rerouted the shipment.

So far everything has come in good condition and worked well... but about those LEDs.

The 10 mm LEDs I ordered were supposed to be about the same brightness as those Jeff used - but I'm a little underwhelmed on the green ones.  The red ones are nice and bright, the green are just a little dim in my opinion.  In addition, if you notice in Jeff's design, it looks like he used green LEDs in the 30 mm square switches along the bottom.  The switches were shipped with white LEDs - and the 10 mm green LEDs don't fit in the switch.  So I need 5 mm LEDs if I want some color other than white, which, naturally, I do - but that's entirely a personal preference.  I just like the change from white to color when the switch is hit.  So I ordered a pack of 50 blue 5mm LEDs and one pack of 50 green 5mm LEDs.  Hopefully these are brighter.  I'll decide if I like blue or green better when they come, and I might swap out some of the 5mm for the 10 mm in the status panel LED matrix.

I've also ordered laserjet transparencies.  I know Jeff used inkjet, but I have access to a laserjet, so I'd like to use that instead if I choose to use the print and glue to the panel approach Jeff used.  I'm thinking of taking an alternative approach or two, but we'll cover that later.

Edit:  I know Jeff said he modified the LED holders for the 30 mm square switches to hold the 10 mm LEDs.  I wasn't willing to cut into these parts just yet, plus diffused 5mm LEDs I had on hand seemed to light the face of the switch relatively evenly, so I decided to try to fit 5 mm LEDs first before cutting into the switches.

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