Blinking LEDs on keyboard (AdvMAME) to Atari Volcano Player Start buttons

OneSwitch

Wondering if anyone has any experience of using a Raspberry Pi, RetroPie and AdvanceMAME 3.8 to illuminate Player 1 and Player 2 start buttons.

If you connect a USB keyboard, with LEDs for Number Lock (P1) and CAPS Lock (P2), they blink just like the old Atari games used to. I'd like to use this LED blinking to illuminate the Volcano cone buttons. Does anyone have any tips for doing this, please?

I wondered if there was something off the shelf to do this. My thought if not is to hack a keyboard, and if the power is suitable (probably not) power the Atari cones directly (after checking to make sure they work still). Anyone done this?

If I'm not mistaken, a lot of 1980 era Atari games had this. Asteroids, Centipede, Tempest, etc.

mitu

I think there are a few projects for controlling LEDs with various emulators (especially for arcade games). Check out RGBCommander or LedSpicer.

OneSwitch

@mitu said in Blinking LEDs on keyboard (AdvMAME) to Atari Volcano Player Start buttons:

us emulators (especially for arcade games). Check out RGBCommander or LedSpicer.

Thanks. Was looking for something simpler, not needing code, but maybe some soldering and a resistor or two. Will dig into this when I get a chance.

OneSwitch

@mitu I'm not 100% sure yet, as the 2 player Volcano LED's head had fallen off, but I'm getting there...

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I'm using the small PCB from a Logitech K120 keyboard to drive the LEDs as they output at 2v, straight to the two side facing terminals on the Volcano switches, no resistor needed.

To hopefully fix the 2 player LED, I've ordered a 5mm 2v red LED 80mcd brightness replacement - hoping it will be bright enough. Might need to desolder the green original LEDs from the Logitech PCB. We'll see.

On a VGA monitor, using Advance MAME, this will likely be as good as I'll get to getting the feel of the real thing without spending a fortune.

nukeray

Has anyone figured out how to use LEDspicer with MAME to automate which buttons are used per ROM? I have LEDspicer running but can not for the life of me figure this out.