Installing switches, buttons, and indicator lights.

While I was waiting for a replacement motherboard, I decided to work on adding some switches and what not to the back of the tank.

First off I was cleaning up my wiring and making things nice and neat when I started to consider where I was gonna put all the switches etc. I realized that my mounting board was going to have to be modified or else I could never fit all the switches in, and even if I did, I could never get the board out without pulling out every LED and switch I installed.


So I had to yank out the mounting board and modify it.


I removed a notch that would end up being the place for the mobo LED's and removed the two 'wings' that filled the gap toward the back of the tank. I had to take those off because they would have sat under the switches and stuff and made it impossible to remove the board without first removing the switches.

Let me tell you, this was a HUGE pain in the ***. I wish I had accounted for it before, because I had to take all kinds of crap apart to get it back out and then modify it.

Now that I had that taken care of, on to the switches etc.

Master Power Switch
When it was off, the power line to the batteries and 12V jack was broken, however it did not break the connection of the 12V jack and batteries, so the batteries would still charge off the jack when the main power switch was off.
When this switch is off nothing has power.

Motor Controller Power Switch
This broke the power to the motor controller in the front of the tank. This would allow me to work on the tank and not have to worry about the thing running away on me.

Servo Controller Power Switch
This one is a little tricky. The Servo controller doesn't run off of 12V. I't is a 5-6V system. Instead of adding its own DC-DC voltage regulator, I just ran it off of the power supply that runs the motherboard. If you don't know it, PC power supplys give 5V(red lines) and 12V(yellow lines).
So the switch is simple in that it just breaks power to the servo controller from the motherboard power supply, but tricky in that the motherboard supply has to be on to give power to the servo controller. Not that big of a deal really.


Here is an image of the switches installed.


Next, I needed to install indicator lights for the Motor Controller, and Servo Controller switches. The Master Power Switch has its own built in light.

The two LED's had to be connected correctly with the switch and then resistors added. Unlike lamps, LED's don't have built in resistors, and you must be mindful of polarity.


I put the resistors inline with the wire just behind the LED.


Then I covered them up with some heatshrink.


Next I drilled holes and mounted some LED holders. The plastic was way to thick for them to catch right so I had to modify them and glue them in place.


Here they are mounted etc.




Now as mentioned before, the Servo Controller has no power unless the motherboard is on. Since I had no motherboard, how did I power up the power supply to test the light?
Like this..


To power an atx power supply simply short the green wire on the motherboard connector to ground.

Motherboard Power Button
This is just a momentary switch that turns on the motherboard. It connects to the built in pins of the motherboard itself.

Motherboard Reset Button
Same as above, just a momentary switch that connects to the reset pins of the motherboard.

These two switches were very straight forward, just drilled the hole and mounted them. Again, I yanked the wires from old computer hookups and wired them to the switches I got at Radio Shack. The green button will be replaced with a red one.

Power on and HDD Activity
These were just straight forward LED's that I actually yanked from an old computer someplace (I have a huge box full). They connected to the pins made for them on the motherboard. I didn't have to add resistors here because that was taken care of on the motherboard.

Here is an image from the inside view where LED sockets mounted. This is what the gap in the mounting board was made for.


Here they are mounted inside and outside views.