Help with electronics (LEDS)

[av32productions]

Be it in mind, I am just looking for help looking for tutorials or help being pointed in the right direction. I am more of a building and fabricating and have limited knowledge of electronics. I am beginning construction on a replica which requires leds to run very specifically. And by that I mean that the prop has 7 buttons, one for power and the other six to operate the leds. Also the buttons are "press buttons", I don't know what else to call it. Meaning I need to have the circuit work where i can click the button once and have the lights stay on untill the button is pressed again. Here is a diagram i've made of the prop. The led/button pairings go as such

Button 1: Turns on one led towards the top
Button 2: Turns on the three blue leds near the top
Button 3:turns on all the lights
Button 4: turns on just the blue strips of leds
button 5: turns on the red led strips
button 6: turns on the red and blue strips

Also if possible, hopefully i can stack the button presses. for example, i can press button 1 and 5 to just have the top led and the red strip on.

Thanks for any help you can provide. Again I'm just looking for help finding instructions. All of this would be hard to type into google.

 

[nomuse]

Yeah...three ways of doing all that with those buttons.

First is real old school (as in, Edison school). Get buttons with multiple contacts. You want push-buttons that are push-on, push off.

Next is semi-old school; relay ladder logic or the same thing with transistors (or even gates). And, yeah, you could diode some of this stuff, but that doesn't play well with the voltage drop that's already there.

Third obvious solution branches completely away from the two above, but I suggest it because you have so many different combinations it actually becomes simplest to implement -- fewer connections, fewer components -- even if it does appear at first glance to be the most complicated solution. Anyhow, that's to use a micro. Arduino Nano will fill the bill, although you might (depending on the LEDs) need power drivers.

Anyhow.

First thing to do is Truth Table your LEDs and buttons. That will give you a better picture of how the connections will have to work:

........................B1....B2....B3....B4....B5....B6
Top LED............X..............X
Three Blues..............X.......X
Blue Strip...........................X.....X................X
Red Strip............................X...............X......X

 

[Forge]

Hi av32,

From your sketch it looks like a hand held prop? So maybe nomuse's suggestion of an arduino or possibly a raspberry pi might be the best option. If you go the transistor route, you will need to brush up on your soldering skills, bread boards would work easier but are bulky and it looks like you are tight for space along with the cost of transistors, soldering iron ec. would easily be more than a low end Arduino. You can also pick up Arduino's and Pi's that have speakers so if you get comfortable you could add sound to your prop. There are plenty of youtube tutorials out there.