Illuminated RGB Push Buttons - Starting a video on display

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AMueller
 
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Illuminated RGB Push Buttons - Starting a video on display

Post by AMueller »

Hi everyone, for a museums project we need to integrate illuminated push buttons into the following set up:
- LC Display
- Brightsign video player
- Controller (controllino max) with severall GPIO inputs and outputs
- 3x illuminated push buttons

The idea is, that all three buttons are always illuminated in white. If the visitor pushes one of the
buttons the light will turn to blue, as long as the video goes.

It should'nt be possible to interrupt a video. So the blue light will always be on until the video stops.

Is this possible with the buttons from adafruit?

Thank you all in advance

Aline Mueller

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dlleigh
 
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Re: Illuminated RGB Push Buttons - Starting a video on displ

Post by dlleigh »

What illuminated buttons were you thinking of using for this project? They would need to be mechanically robust and would probably have to have RGB LEDs built-in. Once you have those picked out, the rest is a matter of software.

A simple way to mock up your setup would be with Adafruit NeoKey Trinkey - USB NeoPixel mechanical key switches: https://www.adafruit.com/product/5020
You could attach each via a separate USB port of the computer running the video, or use a USB expander. You could write the software in CircuitPython and have the whole thing done quickly.

I said mock up because I don't believe that these buttons would survive long in a museum environment. You'd really need arcade style buttons for that, and I haven't seen any that include RGB LEDs.

You might be able to modify these to do what you want: https://www.adafruit.com/product/491
According to the description they can be disassembled and the LED replaced. You might be able to replace the existing LED with an RGB LED, or perhaps separate blue and white LEDs.

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AMueller
 
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Re: Illuminated RGB Push Buttons - Starting a video on displ

Post by AMueller »

Hi,

I thought about using this one here https://www.adafruit.com/product/3423. It's saying it has RGB.

Programming wise, can I give the button a trigger, saying the video has finished, and switch the colour back
from blue to white. Is this possible? This is really not clear for me.

Thank you in advance.

Best Aline

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dlleigh
 
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Re: Illuminated RGB Push Buttons - Starting a video on displ

Post by dlleigh »

Thanks, I hadn't seen that one. Rugged buttons should be fine for a museum, with a caveat about the force required to push them. The rugged buttons you linked to require a force of somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 newtons to activate them. That shouldn't be a problem for an occasional press by an adult finger, but it could be difficult for a small child. I don't know how that would affect your application.

The best way to read the buttons and control the lights is with firmware running on the Controllino. As long as there is a means for the Controllino and the Brightsign video player to communicate with each other, so that the Controllino can tell the video player to start playing the video and the video player can tell the Controllino that the video has finished, then this should work. I know nothing about the video player or how it communicates, so I cannot help you with that part.

Once you have the above working, the Controllino will need three GPIO inputs (for the push buttons) and nine GPIO outputs (for the LEDs), the firmware can read the buttons and turn the LEDs on and off. For your application, you could get away with only six GPIO outputs for the LEDs. Since you only need two colors (white and blue), the red and green LEDs can be tied together because they will only be turned on when white light is produced, but not for blue light.

The Controllino looks like overkill for this application. You could probably implement this with a less complicated (and less expensive) Arduino-compatible, but definitely use what you are comfortable with.

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