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With the base wiring for the LED's and buttons done we need to start into the control panel on the front of the dance deck. We chose to go with a very symmetrical layout for our decks. This is a 3" X 36" sheet of acrylic that is 1/4 inch thick. We used standard drill bits at very high speed to slowly drill the holes in the material using more of a melting technique |
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Assembly is really easy. Using the nuts that hold the controllers to the original face plates we will mount the controllers to our new control panel. Installing the power switch and power jack go exactly the same way. Just insert and thread on the nuts. Then using some 16 gauge speaker wire and some small drops of clear hot glue to hold it in place we connected the electrical. This is really easy just "Y" out the power from the power connector and run a lead from the positive terminal to the power switch. |
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Here is a little closer look at the wiring on the power switch side of things. |
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With the panel assembly finished we need to test it out. Plug in the power and hit the power switch. If the LED's light up on the panels your in great shape. |
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One last shot for verboseness sake. Here is the back of the power panel with the power lead connected. Use a little hot glue to insulate bare wire connections as needed. |
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One more tip that we learned. We scrounged up some 12V 1000MA power supplies for this projects lighting system. These didn’t match the sockets we bought nor were the same between the two of them. We decided to cut off the existing plugs and install new ones. This was a rather painless project. |
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The next step is to install the front acrylic panel. To do this I chose to use some clear hot glue for ease of install and getting it done quickly. Alternately you could use a clear silicone if you wanted to wait for it to dry. |
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With the LEDs and front panel installed now we need to splice into them and extend them to the front console. This is really simple just time consuming. Using some wire strippers strip our leads. Then run some 4 wire phone wire (solid core) to each led through the conduit. Strip the ends of those wires and match color to color in a way you will remember and repeat for all the connections. Using a soldering iron use a small drop of solder on each connection to insure it will be strong and prevent shorting. |
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On the controller end of things we basically repeat what we did the LEDs matching colors and snapping the connector ends into the lighting controller. |
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Before we close up the wiring we need to test our connections. To do this we will just be powering up the chameleon mixer and cycling through each color. If you end up with a dead LED or color in a led check your wiring first of all. And if you have to replace a LED just drill out the holes and glue and install a new one. |
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With our wiring verified we will proceed to clean up the wiring. Starting with using some electrical tape wrap each connection to guard against shorts. |
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| Just another shot of the installed panel with the lights on. |
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Here is a close up of the power plug and controls from the front of the deck. |
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The next step is to start hiding the cables I the conduit. This is fairly flexible stuff and easily stretches to hide a lot of cable. One tip is not to leave long leads so you don’t have so much to stuff in the conduit. |
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So there is the finished panel. We drilled one large hole in the center of it for the wires from the controller box to pass through. |
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With the 2 decks pressed together I wanted to point out the power connectors. Having them close is really nice for cable management. But one trick we learned after the fact was to build a custom “Y” cable and use only one power supply to power both decks. |
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| Here is a close up of the right side of the right deck |
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| Here is a close up of the left side of the right deck. |
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Here is a shot of the 2 decks side by side and the panels installed. |
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Ok this is the last shot of the assembled deck for now... I think that that our verboseness of pics quota was met. Don’t email me saying you want more. Do you realize how hard it is to come up with clever crap to say on every picture? |
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