IL arcade buttons LED modification

I am a fan of the IL (Industrias Lorenzo, S.A.) arcade buttons and joysticks. Especially the convex old style arcade buttons. They are available in different colors, both translucent and opaque. But without illumination. Not anymore!

I have designed two different style PCBs to address the issue. One goes inside the button, the other is mounted on bottom of the button and is held in place by the microswitch. On the image above, the left button has the 'outside' version and the right one has the 'inside' version. There isn't much difference in appearance between the two. The outside version gives a bit deeper color as there is more colored plastic to pass through (if you use white LED).

You can order the 'inside' version from this page. If you want the 'outside' version, check my other shared projects!

The board

The above picture shows the boards and required components. Just one LED and one resistor per board.

The suggested bill of materials is shown on this page. However, the LED could be pretty much any other 2835 case LED, and you could use a colored LED to match the button color. The given Cree part number probably won't be in production for many years, as the LEDs are constantly evolving. In such case, just search for a white Cree J-series LED in 2835 package. The suggested 100 ohm resistor gives ca. 20 mA current, but you may need to adjust it to match your taste.

How to install it

The outside LED board is very easy to install. Just put it between the button body and the microswitch. You can add a small adhesive rubber feet to stop the board moving around, as shown in picture below.

The inside LED board requires more work. The amount of work also depends on the button type. On some IL buttons there is already a hole in the middle, through which the wires can pass. They also have small recessed area on the micro switch holder arm, which again allows wires to pass through it. But on some IL buttons both these features are missing, and you need to drill two holes for the wires, as shown on the middle button on image below. I am not 100% sure how to determine which IL button models have the hole and recess. But it seems that all my short stem buttons and none of my long stem buttons have them.

Here is another picture displaying the difference. On the left we have IL PSL-L; concave, translucent red button with long stem. You need to drill two holes ton install the IL inside LED board. On the right we have IL PSL-H; concave white arcade button with short stem. You don't need to drill anything. Just disassemble the plunger, place the board under the spring and run wires through the hole. When attaching the microswitch, the wires can pass it through the recess.

Results

Photo below shows six different color translucent buttons with white Cree LED. The LED current is 20 mA here (R1 = 100 ohm), but you probably want to use lower current. The light is very bright when looking straight to button. You could go even down to 2 mA (1 kohm resistor) and it is still bright. There is some difference in brightness between the colors. The clear and yellow are the brightest. Green is the dimmest. All the buttons here use the IL outside LED board.

The Cree LED is so bright that you can even illuminate an opaque white button! It actually looks very nice, because the light is diffused more compared to translucent buttons. Photo below shows one of my arcade sticks, where I have illuminated the start button. I am using here the IL inside LED board, with higher, 40 mA current (R1 = 50 ohm), and the result is perfect. By the way, the arcade stick uses the J-ACE arcade controls encoder, which can also control LEDs. Check it out!

For more details, check my project page at http://kair.us/projects/il_button_leds/index.html