How hard is it to mod an Egret II control panel with LEDs?

[PC Engine Fan X!]

As of right now, I've just got a plain-vanilla unmodded Egret II candy cab with no LED lighting on it and was thinking about modding it so that it sports both joysticks and all 12 buttons + P1 & P2 start buttons to all light up in a cool futuristic "blue" colored motif.

Was browsing on the SRK forum here about the slick Paradise Arcade Shop's Kaimana PCB and the various hardware needed to get it done properly: http://forums.shoryuken.com/discussion/ ... f-the-year

and the necessary Arduino coding to get the Kaimana PCB up and running to light up the various LEDs: http://support.paradisearcadeshop.com/d ... controller

One SRK forum member even managed to replcate the slick red colored "Kitt" scrolling LED eye animation (from the classic 1982 Knight Rider TV series) with the Kaimana but set for a certain fighting game instead.

Would be cool if some shmup themed LED lighting patterns could be created for the various arcade shmup PCBs out there in the wilds like with the DDP series (especially DDP-DFK version 1.5 and the BL variant PCBs).

I know that the only six button based arcade shmup PCB that would take advantage of six different colored LED lighting settings would be none other than American Sammy's Daioh PCB per player.

My question is, would I need to get just one or two Kaimana PCBs and wire it up to my existing E2's control panel wiring? (It's currently set up to play the cool MVS Neo-Geo games as a four button control scheme -- buttons 5 and 6 are just there for completeness on my Egret 3 2L12B control panel set that mounted to the existing Egret 2 candy cab).

Tried looking on youtube to see if anyone had modded an Egret 2 with the aforementioned Kaimana LED mod and no such luck finding such a uploaded video whatsoever.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[ELabit]

That's like putting spinners on a ferrari

[Pasky]

Oh god don't do this.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Putting spinners on a Ferarri, hmmm? Sounds like it would be considered sacrilegious to LED mod such an Egret II cab when it'd be cheaper to swap out the balltops and push buttons to one's liking -- it'd be cheaper on the ol' wallet/purse easily. Sure, I've seen plenty of plain-vanilla Egret IIs with no LED mods on them...it'd certainly look quite different than what's already out there in the wilds.

I do recall of a fellow shmupper whom spray painted an Egret II in an all-black paint scheme and that got a lot of bad flack (even it meant to do a simple mono-color/tint change on the outer candy cab shell -- isn't the overall white paint job "too plain-vanilla" as it is?). As an artist, I do know that working with a "black & white" motif is quite different in terms of overall visual aesthetics than working with colors (using the color spectrum chart as a visual guide when using warm/cool colors & hues + tints) when creating a new piece of artwork from scratch.

Here's a sample youtube vid of someone who modded a Taito Egret 29 candy cab with slick LED lighting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgg_Kkht-W8 It, too, sports a four button scheme per player, of course. It's not my video either. Ever since Taito came out with their Taito Concept-E prototype cab as a one-off deal (that is the basis for the current gen Vewlix candy cabs), it sports an impressive array of LED lit joysticks and push buttons for both players indeed. And did you notice that Donpachi is running in the background as well?

Another simple LED mod would be to highlight the E2's on-board marquee sign holder -- that's simple enough to do without rocket science by getting one of those Ikea Dioder LED strips and mounting it on behind the marquee for some slick lighting effects - easy as pie. You can even change the color to your liking -- how cool is that? http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/50192365/

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[emphatic]

The only LED I think would be nice is to somehow illuminate the move strip compartment. I haven't found a way to do it though.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Here's a link to some cool Arduino programming code to have six LED-lit based push buttons blink in a cool looping pattern with fading effects as well: http://www.retrobuiltgames.com/porta-pi ... d-buttons/

Another method of illuminating the Taito Egret 2 instruction strip panel area would be to use a really long blue-colored electro-luminescent based wire setup and place it at the border edge of the supplied arcade instruction strip of your liking (of course, it needs a 12v power supply unit source to power it up continuously with it's own supplied d/c transformer capable of upping the voltage to around 90 volts easily just to get the wire to glow "blue" -- plus the fact that the wiring is flexible enough that you can curve it into place as well). It's quite cool to see it glow brightly in a completely dark room enviroment/setting. Reminds me of that unmistakable "Tron" visual aesthetics/vibe/flair going on.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~