Flickering Sata Cables

[sillen]

We all know about the hard drive activity led. I was wondering if there was any way you could make this circut controll an EL light.


I found these sata cables that have an EL Light butilt in. Link :http://www.frozencpu.com/sat-36.html

I want to have these "flicker" at the same time as the HDD LED flickers. I think It would give an interesting effect.

The problem is, that I have no clue of how to go about getting this to work. I assume that it would invovle some type of electronics or someting. Anybody have any ideas?

[Omega]

there's probably a very similar way to do it, like with IDE cables. split a select cable, insert power, and stuff.


maybe google it?

[OvRiDe]

I gotta say this sounds like a really cool idea. So much that it intrigued me to do a little research.

I found a post on Gideon Tech about using bicolored LED's for HDD Activity. The post is HERE (http://www.gideontech.com/content/articles/238/1). As you probably know its not a good idea to hook up the EL inverter directly to the motherboard (3V I think). Im not 100% sure but I think that the inverter is 12V and pulls way more voltage and current then the normal case LED would. So doing it that way would most likely damage your motherboard. GideonX overcame this in the post by using a 4N25 optocoupler. An optocoupler is kind of like a relay, its solid state and will isolate the switched current from the trigger current, thus keeping your motherboard safe. I looked up the 4N25 and it is capable of handling up to 30V, so the inverter should be fine. Basically you would hook the wires from the output hdd activity on the motherboard to pins 1 (+) and 2 (-) of the 4N25 and then then 12V (if the inverter is 12V) would connect to pin 5 and then pin 6 would go to the + side of the inverter. If you look at the diagram from GT you can probably extrapolate what I have stated.

I must say I am not an electronics guru so I may not be accurate here.. PLEASE if anyone can shed more light on this PLEASE DO SO. I would love to see this in action.

Also I thought of a way to elaborate on this idea a bit. Some of the SATA II drives have outputs on them for HDD Activity, like alot of the older IDE drives did. They have outputs so when you put them in an external drive enclosure, there is an LED for drive activity. With that said, if you were using multiple SATA II drives you could have the individual SATA cable light up independantly of each other.. (Personally I think that would look AWSOME in something like Stygian Shane's "Case for file Storage (http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1757)")

I hope this helps and good luck..

[Malatory]

Problem with inverters is that they are taking a DC power source and converting them to a AC current. Doing a Pulse across the inverter like would be needed might cause it to burn out. The Sound activated CCFL have the power pulse going across the tubes only and they dont have a long life or at least not as long as CCFL's.

There are also other sites like mektu.net that used the 4N25 Op chip. to flicker LEDS.

Might look to see if you can use a Sound activated inverter with the El wire.

[Rankenphile]

lol... completely off topic, but I misread the title of this thread to be "Flickering Santa Candles".

Needless to say, I was intrigued. :p

[Jetty_200]

sorry that is pretty funny but uhh.....ya would you mind explaining that again i'm good with computers i guess but i really wanna learn more about electronics...like wiring stuff like that and what not ...i guess where i'm really lost is how does it tie into the SATA cable to tell it when to flicker on and off???? I get the part of it runing off of the mother board (somwhat atleast) thanks in advance.

[OvRiDe]

Problem with inverters is that they are taking a DC power source and converting them to a AC current. Doing a Pulse across the inverter like would be needed might cause it to burn out.

Yep, I didnt even think of that in my excitement.. heh.. It would probably be like when my wife put one of those flouresent screw in bulbs into a "Dusk till Dawn" Light fixture on our front porch. The light slowly gets brighter as it gets darker outside.. Well lets just say the bulb lasted about a week and died. So I guess the only way to do something similar to what I stated above, you would need to put the optoisolator between the inverter and the SATA cable. Since that is a Higher AC voltage, I don't believe the 4N25 would be able to handle it. :(


sorry that is pretty funny but uhh.....ya would you mind explaining that again i'm good with computers i guess but i really wanna learn more about electronics...like wiring stuff like that and what not ...i guess where i'm really lost is how does it tie into the SATA cable to tell it when to flicker on and off???? I get the part of it runing off of the mother board (somwhat atleast) thanks in advance.

Well the specific SATA cables that we are talking about here are the EL cables offered by FrozenCPU. There is a seperate wire that feeds an EL strip covering the cable that lights up. So there is an inverter (powerpack) that hooks up to a molex connector from the power supply and then a set of wires that goes from the inverter to the SATA cable. So the part we are talking about doesnt have much to do with the SATA part of the cable just the EL lighting surrounding it..

Hope that helps clear it up.. if not let us know, I may not be explaining it that well..

EDIT: HAHA .. WHOA.. I just realized that NOW the Title IS Flickering Santa Candles.. Thats pretty funny.. :D

[Rankenphile]

rofl

[Jetty_200]

Hahaha just for you overide, but ya thanks that does help me :) anyways was wondering...where would these modules lay and does this actualy work for SATA EL wires??? Thanks:D

EDIT: sorry my mistake me talking about the SATA cables i ment the EL wiring on the SATA cables

[OvRiDe]

Hahaha just for you overide, but ya thanks that does help me :) anyways was wondering...where would these modules lay and does this actualy work for SATA EL wires??? Thanks:D

EDIT: sorry my mistake me talking about the SATA cables i ment the EL wiring on the SATA cables

Well if you talking about the inverter module.. it can be placed anywhere in the case, just like you would for a cold cathode. If you talking about the 4N25 optoisolator. Its like a small chip so it would be best to be placed on a breadboard (circuit board) and wired up that way. Unfortunately Mal is right in the fact it would most likely burn up the inverter to the EL if you tried to pulse it quickly using the 12V input. There is probably a way to switch it on the AC side but my electronics skillz are just not up to snuff enough to give a solid solution.

I'm hoping that one of the electronic guru's would be able to give a better solution if there is one. ;)