sudomod

I've been toying with the idea of having one or more externally visible LEDs to indicate power status (on, charging, charged, low battery).

It seems that a low battery LED would be easiest to add, as the powerboost 1000c provides a breakout point for this (labelled as "LBO").

After a bit of research, it seems that additional LED(s) could be wired up to the ones already present on the powerboost: https://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&p=384809. In particular, I'm thinking of using a single RGB LED, such as http://uk.farnell.com/kingbright/l-154a ... dp/2290374 to indicate charging, fully charged and powered on statuses, and a second regular LED to indicate low battery.

My knowledge of electronics is not very good, but I am assuming that I would wire the 3 input pins on the RGB LED (corresponding to the 3 available colours), to the input/positive pads of the 3 LEDS on the powerboost, and the 4th pin on the RGB LED to ground. Assuming this is correct, I have the following questions:

• Would I need to remove the existing LEDs from the powerboost?
• Would I need to add any additional resistors to limit voltage through the extra LED?
• Would the extra LED's ground pin need to be wired to the ground pin on the powerboats, or would any other ground connection within the GBZ work?

If anyone out there has the relevant electronics knowledge and could advise me, I'd be very grateful. I also plan to photograph and document my progress in case this is helpful for anyone else who wants to do the same.

It would be great to use a multi color led like this
https://www.pololu.com/product/1074

The challenge is to have the good color for each battery status. I don't know how to do that.

I was going to tackle this after I complete my first build. But instead of using a common rounded RGB LED, I was going to use a 0603 SMT RGB LED. They are what I had used previously to mod PSP's.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01CUGA2 ... ref=plSrch

jjj wrote:I've been toying with the idea of having one or more externally visible LEDs to indicate power status (on, charging, charged, low battery).

It seems that a low battery LED would be easiest to add, as the powerboost 1000c provides a breakout point for this (labelled as "LBO").

After a bit of research, it seems that additional LED(s) could be wired up to the ones already present on the powerboost: https://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&p=384809. In particular, I'm thinking of using a single RGB LED, such as http://uk.farnell.com/kingbright/l-154a ... dp/2290374 to indicate charging, fully charged and powered on statuses, and a second regular LED to indicate low battery.

My knowledge of electronics is not very good, but I am assuming that I would wire the 3 input pins on the RGB LED (corresponding to the 3 available colours), to the input/positive pads of the 3 LEDS on the powerboost, and the 4th pin on the RGB LED to ground. Assuming this is correct, I have the following questions:

• Would I need to remove the existing LEDs from the powerboost?
• Would I need to add any additional resistors to limit voltage through the extra LED?
• Would the extra LED's ground pin need to be wired to the ground pin on the powerboats, or would any other ground connection within the GBZ work?

If anyone out there has the relevant electronics knowledge and could advise me, I'd be very grateful. I also plan to photograph and document my progress in case this is helpful for anyone else who wants to do the same.

This is a great question... I've been toying around with an RGB led for the exact same purpose... I guesss you could leave the old led but it won't be easy to solder new one on such tiny leds... I'm not yet on that part of my project but I will tell you my findings

jjj wrote:I've been toying with the idea of having one or more externally visible LEDs to indicate power status (on, charging, charged, low battery).

It seems that a low battery LED would be easiest to add, as the powerboost 1000c provides a breakout point for this (labelled as "LBO").

After a bit of research, it seems that additional LED(s) could be wired up to the ones already present on the powerboost: https://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&p=384809. In particular, I'm thinking of using a single RGB LED, such as http://uk.farnell.com/kingbright/l-154a ... dp/2290374 to indicate charging, fully charged and powered on statuses, and a second regular LED to indicate low battery.

My knowledge of electronics is not very good, but I am assuming that I would wire the 3 input pins on the RGB LED (corresponding to the 3 available colours), to the input/positive pads of the 3 LEDS on the powerboost, and the 4th pin on the RGB LED to ground. Assuming this is correct, I have the following questions:

• Would I need to remove the existing LEDs from the powerboost?
• Would I need to add any additional resistors to limit voltage through the extra LED?
• Would the extra LED's ground pin need to be wired to the ground pin on the powerboats, or would any other ground connection within the GBZ work?

If anyone out there has the relevant electronics knowledge and could advise me, I'd be very grateful. I also plan to photograph and document my progress in case this is helpful for anyone else who wants to do the same.

Hey,
There was some discussion about this a while back (which I can't seem to find at the moment). I bought some of those RGB LEDs for this very purpose. The thing about those types of LEDs, though, is you can't just wire each pin up to power and have it work -- you have to have something control it with PWM (getting audio out of the Raspberry Pi Zero uses the same principal, incidentally).

The good news is, the Teensy can do this pretty easily in addition to handling the controls! Adafruit has a guide here which is applicable to the Teensy as well: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-ard ... s?view=all

So my plan was to use the LED pins on the powerboost as input to the Teensy (might have to step down the voltage so you don't fry the Teensy, I'm not sure). Then the Teensy could read those pins periodically, and it would be pretty simple to change colors depending on which pins were active (in other words which LEDs on the powerboost are on).

I *think* all this should work great, I just haven't had a chance to try it yet.

Here's what I'm doing. Rather than soldering more LEDs, I bought some 0.75mm end-to-end fiber optic. It works pretty well! I started a thread a while back. I'll update it with my progress.

http://sudomod.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=175

Popcorn wrote:Here's what I'm doing. Rather than soldering more LEDs, I bought some 0.75mm end-to-end fiber optic. It works pretty well! I started a thread a while back. I'll update it with my progress.

http://sudomod.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=175

I read this thread a little while ago. The only thing I was thinking was how did/would you mount the pof to the LED it's self?

wermy wrote:

jjj wrote:I've been toying with the idea of having one or more externally visible LEDs to indicate power status (on, charging, charged, low battery).

It seems that a low battery LED would be easiest to add, as the powerboost 1000c provides a breakout point for this (labelled as "LBO").

After a bit of research, it seems that additional LED(s) could be wired up to the ones already present on the powerboost: https://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&p=384809. In particular, I'm thinking of using a single RGB LED, such as http://uk.farnell.com/kingbright/l-154a ... dp/2290374 to indicate charging, fully charged and powered on statuses, and a second regular LED to indicate low battery.

My knowledge of electronics is not very good, but I am assuming that I would wire the 3 input pins on the RGB LED (corresponding to the 3 available colours), to the input/positive pads of the 3 LEDS on the powerboost, and the 4th pin on the RGB LED to ground. Assuming this is correct, I have the following questions:

• Would I need to remove the existing LEDs from the powerboost?
• Would I need to add any additional resistors to limit voltage through the extra LED?
• Would the extra LED's ground pin need to be wired to the ground pin on the powerboats, or would any other ground connection within the GBZ work?

If anyone out there has the relevant electronics knowledge and could advise me, I'd be very grateful. I also plan to photograph and document my progress in case this is helpful for anyone else who wants to do the same.

Hey,
There was some discussion about this a while back (which I can't seem to find at the moment). I bought some of those RGB LEDs for this very purpose. The thing about those types of LEDs, though, is you can't just wire each pin up to power and have it work -- you have to have something control it with PWM (getting audio out of the Raspberry Pi Zero uses the same principal, incidentally).

The good news is, the Teensy can do this pretty easily in addition to handling the controls! Adafruit has a guide here which is applicable to the Teensy as well: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-ard ... s?view=all

So my plan was to use the LED pins on the powerboost as input to the Teensy (might have to step down the voltage so you don't fry the Teensy, I'm not sure). Then the Teensy could read those pins periodically, and it would be pretty simple to change colors depending on which pins were active (in other words which LEDs on the powerboost are on).

I *think* all this should work great, I just haven't had a chance to try it yet.

Sorry for a double post, but why wouldn't soldering LED's in parallel work? I figured that it would receive relatively the same power from the powerboost and light up. That is if you're using the same type of LED's

Synnth3t1k wrote: Sorry for a double post, but why wouldn't soldering LED's in parallel work? I figured that it would receive relatively the same power from the powerboost and light up. That is if you're using the same type of LED's

Those kinds of LEDs just work differently. You don't supply just a simple on or off constant voltage to them. Check out that Adafruit link, they have a great explanation/guide.

Synnth3t1k wrote:

Popcorn wrote:Here's what I'm doing. Rather than soldering more LEDs, I bought some 0.75mm end-to-end fiber optic. It works pretty well! I started a thread a while back. I'll update it with my progress.

http://sudomod.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=175

I read this thread a little while ago. The only thing I was thinking was how did/would you mount the pof to the LED it's self?

Just with a clump of hot glue. I make them a bit longer than I need. Then after I complete the unit and close it up, then use wire cutters to trim them down and a bit of glue to hold them in place