[SOLVED] Newbie Trying To Make A Simple(ish?) Circuit!

[saradilc]

Hello everyone, I am a huge newbie to electronics but I'm quite captivated by it. I am trying to make a series circuit. I will try to describe it as best as I can and explain my dilemma.


I'm going to be using a 9V battery to power some LED lights. I am also using a toggle switch to turn the lights on/off, and a 3 position selector switch to choose which colour lights are on (red blue or green.)

These lights are being used to light up a momentary switch (arcade button), which is wired seperately as a guitar killswitch. When I push the momentary switch it grounds the guitar tone, but I would also like to wire the momentary switch to turn off the LEDs when pushed, to create a strobe effect when the killswitch is used.

The dilema is as follows: As far as I understand I would need a N.C switch to kill the lights. Although arcade buttons come with both N.O and N.C on some models, those models do not fit inside a guitar, so I had to buy a shorter one that is solely N.O

Could I wire the N.O momentary switch to somehow turn off the lights when held down?

Thank you for your time!

 

[flipcity]

Perhaps as simply as the following and if I understand correctly that one end of your N.O. switch is grounded. Wire the led's current limiting resistor to your 9 vdc then your led from that resistor to ground. Now connect a wire from the junction of the resistor and led to your N.O. switch. You should make sure that the other signal (guitar tone) is current limited somehow when you ground it through your switch so that excessive currents do not flow. Since you seem to have already wired your "kill" switch and nothing burned up when you used it, the signal appears to be current limited. However, your greatest issue and one you should first discern without damaging anything is that your signal (guitar tone ) can be connected to your 9 vdc through the resistor without corrupting its amplification. If the amp is AC coupled then you should be ok.

Basically you are steering the current away from the led by shorting it out through the switch. Also be sure that the power rating of the led's current limiting resistor can handle the current when you close the switch. Hope that helps...good luck!

 

[KJ6EAD]

The basic switches (micro switches) that are mounted on arcade buttons come in a huge variety of options. I don't know what you mean by "strobe effect". Take a look at this: IPBs, Pushbuttons, Poker VLT Buttons, Low Profile Push Buttons, LED Lamps, Competition Pushbutton and be more specific.