cathodes under bed

how would i go about doing this would i just get a inverter or an AC adapter and hook the up from there, and how would i hook them up to a switch if possible to hook all six to the same power source.
Thanx

lol, he's going for the glow room now!.. don't be goin there man.. gonna have jeleous people here =P Next thing ya know Addicted2Iceled gonna be put'n Iceleds all over his bedroom... He's gonna have a disco ballroom thing goin.. scary huh =P

As for actually hooking up all them cathodes, the simplest/cheapest way I can think of to do it is just find an old computer case and strip the AT power supply out of it. It puts out 12 volts and enough to power a hundred of those =P Just wire them all to the power supply. Positive to the yellow wire and negative to the black wire. Then use the power switch on the power supply to turn them all on and off.

You can do all of this with an ATX power supply, but it will require some aftermarket mods on the power supply to get it to start up without being plugged into a motherboard.

Also, I can't stress this part enough. USE WIRE NUTS! Don't wrap your wires with electrical tape and say that's that... so many times I've seen electrical tape get worn and come off, and next thing you know you are shorting the power supply and causing a fire. Wire nuts aren't that expensive.. You can buy a pack large enough to do what you want for like $1.50...

Oh, and almost forgot the most important thing... Take pics when you're done, and post them up here! *grin* =)

Mav wrote:

lol, he's going for the glow room now!.. don't be goin there man.. gonna have jeleous people here =P Next thing ya know Addicted2Iceled gonna be put'n Iceleds all over his bedroom... He's gonna have a disco ballroom thing goin.. scary huh =P As for actually hooking up all them cathodes, the simplest/cheapest way I can think of to do it is just find an old computer case and strip the AT power supply out of it. It puts out 12 volts and enough to power a hundred of those =P Just wire them all to the power supply. Positive to the yellow wire and negative to the black wire. Then use the power switch on the power supply to turn them all on and off. You can do all of this with an ATX power supply, but it will require some aftermarket mods on the power supply to get it to start up without being plugged into a motherboard. i sell the night club lights, so i would put them in my room if i wanted to... i'm never in my room thou, so no biggy there... Also, I can't stress this part enough. USE WIRE NUTS! Don't wrap your wires with electrical tape and say that's that... so many times I've seen electrical tape get worn and come off, and next thing you know you are shorting the power supply and causing a fire. Wire nuts aren't that expensive.. You can buy a pack large enough to do what you want for like $1.50...

EDIT:

HEY!!! I HAD WORDS HERE!!

it said i sell night club lights and would have them in my room instead of iceled's, but i don't really want to... i'm never home anyway.

what about having a ground

It was already stated. Read carefully.

Mav, I think you are wrong, you can hook up any power supply to work without the motherboard. All you have to do is connect 2 pins together and it will work.

You can take a power supply out of an old PC, or get one for $20 at a computer store.

old power supply.. the atx one have a "soft boot" but the old ones arre still around... i still have an old 486 laying around that has some play around programs on it with a non-atx style power supply.

I use a mac. It is that simple.

what fun is a simple computer that never breaks down? i mean think of how many network and computer tech jobs would be lost if everyone has Macs... just think about it... i means companies would just wind up being more profitable then ever, and that would mess up the economy for the little people... like me, who fixes these messed up pc's. if i had a macintosh, i would be soo bored becuase there would never be any problems... but i think it's all set up that way anyway... people who need real computers, buy a mac... and everyone else follows the general economic trend and buys a PC... they keep them at a certain level of inefficiency to keep the jobs active and the money flowing...

do you actually believe what you just typed?

I've seen plenty of sad faced macs... more then I'd care to share.. those, and the resource hog problems all of the programs have on macs.. anything you use on PC, tripple the memmory use, and you get the average memmory use for the mac.

As for power supplies, you forget, on ATX power supplies, you don't have a power switch. You have to take a few wires and cut them and wire a switch into them in addition to shorting a few other wires.. for someone who doesn't know must about wireing up cathodes, do you really want to explain the procedure for modifying an ATX power supply to work for the job, or would you rather point him to something that already works without any mods/shorting of wires...

And PC's would be a lot better if they eliminated companies like Packard Bell (wait, it was bought out.. now it's EMachine)... And such that make the **** products known to man, and expect you to buy it and call it a "computer"... All it can compute is the door being stopped from slamming shut when I have it sitting there as a door stop...

Also, if all of the employees at Microsoft would take a shotgun (we gotta make sure it does the job) with a buckshot in each, stick the muzzle in their mouth, and pull the trigger, all of the PC's would be running on a real OS like Unix/Linux/BSD... Remember, your precious Macintosh's OS was written off of a Unix based platform... why? Because it's stable!

My linux box ran for over a year straight without being rebooted... my 98 machines had to be rebooted every other day... Only time my linux box ever went down was when we had a power outage.. and it came right back up when power was restored too...

ADDICTED2ICELED wrote:

what fun is a simple computer that never breaks down? i mean think of how many network and computer tech jobs would be lost if everyone has Macs... just think about it... i means companies would just wind up being more profitable then ever, and that would mess up the economy for the little people... like me, who fixes these messed up pc's. if i had a macintosh, i would be soo bored becuase there would never be any problems... but i think it's all set up that way anyway... people who need real computers, buy a mac... and everyone else follows the general economic trend and buys a PC... they keep them at a certain level of inefficiency to keep the jobs active and the money flowing...

Since I'm in this field, too. I have to agree with A2I. I take care of UNIX boxes, and PCs. I spend SOOOO much more time tinkering with the PCs to keep them running. The UNIX boxes just go. Very little seems to go wrong with them. Plus, if anything does go wrong, they are designed to be very easy to manage remotely.

I've often said that Bill Gates single-handedly created an entire industry, consisting of a huge number of people needed to manage his products. If it wasn't for Bill, people like A2I and myself would not be in demand. Go Bill! Keep making your crappy stuff!

I got a few macs...never had any problems with any of them

Anyone have a PC mounted in their car? I was tempted to make my own custom mounts in my car and wire a PC hidden within the walls of the vehicle. Then I could have standalone LCD displays running into the video card, and you could play games, watch movies, play MP3's, and do whatever else you like to do with a computer right in your car =) I'd of course use a mini HDD for vibration reasons. I'm wondering what I'd do about a DVD player for the computer however, as they aren't designed for road vibration.. prob have to get one designed for a notebook computer.. maybe an external notebook dvd drive =) That'd be pretty sick though...

Some guy did that with his. Just look around online. He had a full tower in the trunk and an LCD with Winamp as his shell. Obviously he used it for MP3s only. He had a removable HD so he could add music on the fly. He had it all rigged to a wirelss remote too.

I would have a wireless nic in it instead, so I can pull into the garage and dump audio/video straight over the network.

hell, why don't you just go all the way and get an airport card to just download the stuff live anywhere... oh yeah... money

or wait... we'll put the millitary satellites to civilian use and transmit live digital audio feeds in soo many stations with no commercials for a small fee..

Pshh, I'll just put up my own sattelite =P screw the military sattelites.. too many firewalls and **** blockers on them *grin*