usb powered led

[BerticusPryme]

ok guys really odd question. i should be inheriting a older hp laptop. I mean the specs are pretty decent. I plan on doin a little mod to it. one of the usb ports is broken. like the inside black piece is broken. I was going to see what i would have to do to wire 4-6 leds to the port so when the system was powered on these leds would light up. I am just trying to figure out a way to add a mod and get use out of a dead port. any ideas where I would start with voltages and all??

[Mach]

USB is 5 volts with a design max of 500mA (some MBs allow you to draw more). Use a led resistor calculator to determine configuration of resistors and leds. http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz

[BerticusPryme]

thanks. that really helpful and all but i understood the most part of that and figured out how to wire them i am needing to know how to connect it to the usb port itself inside the system. do i just use a multimeter to track down the proper power leads it's going in a hp zv5000.

[xmastree]

It'll be the outer pair of connections. The inner ones are data.

[jdbnsn]

yes, the two data wire will have the same color (as I recall green maybe) while the power leads will probably be black and white. We have some excellent wiring tutorials for LED's in the wiki and the tricks,Tips,&tutorials section.

[Mach]

Gotcha, pin 1 (red wire) is 5 volt and pin 4 (black wire) is ground. See pin outs here: http://pinouts.ws/usb-pinout.html

The center section where the pins should be is gone then you may have to back it into the motherboard to pick up the leads. Hopefully it's modular tho.

[SgtM]

Here's a thought. You'll get 5v out of USB. Take a spare usb cable, cut the square end off. Then take an 1/8th watt resistor, and your LED, and solder everything in. Then plug the cable into the usb port. No tracing or anything.

[BerticusPryme]

well see thats what i thought about doing but the port itself is damaged. i was going to wire in about 6 or so leds in the bottom of the chassis to give the laptop a underlighting effect like under a car or something. then becasue the port is broken i was going to fiber glass or bondo over the hole that was left. It gets a little hot sitting on a table so I have made some acrylic feet for it to give it a slight raise. this was jsut going to make it a little pretty and maybe get some use outta the broke usb port.

[McCoy]

Here's a thought. You'll get 5v out of USB. Take a spare usb cable, cut the square end off. Then take an 1/8th watt resistor, and your LED, and solder everything in. Then plug the cable into the usb port. No tracing or anything.

Like this ;)

http://gameladder.org/customimages/usbled.jpg

One I made about a year ago.

Depending on how the usb port is wired, (TBCS is it just has a 4 strand wire going to the back of the port),

if you can de-solder the broken port and either wire up to the terminal, or to the wires going to the terminal, you could run at least 1 LED off it, as I have done.
As previously said, a usb port has 4 pins...1,2,3,4,
the 2 outside pins ( 1 = 5vdc, red , 4 = ground, black) pins 2 & 3
(white and green) are data.


You could most likely run 6 ,but you would need to do some calculations

A great resource that I turn to when thinking about LED's is
http://led.linear1.org/
You should find alot of useful info there.

[xmastree]

i was going to wire in about 6 or so leds in the bottom of the chassis to give the laptop a underlighting effect like under a car

I have made some acrylic feet for it to give it a slight raise.
If you can, why not light up the feet themselves? And since you're inside the thing there's no need to use the USB power for it, you can tap into the 5V somewhere else (if you can find it...).