RGB LED controls from vintage TV panel

Description

I found an old wrecked tube TV in front of my house with this cool-looking variable slide resistors to control brightness, contrast, and volume. I needed proper illumination for my workbench and decided to turn it into a variable switch for a LED strip using three of the potis to dim each color separately. I used a 555 as a PWM control before and looked for good schematics to repurpose them.

Here is a little video of the project in action: https://youtu.be/5DjV9LJLL90

Details

The schema is based on these excellent instructions by Lb_20. Check out her other very well-documented projects!

I added a kill switch to the 12v live wire and replaced R1, R2, and R3 with the ones I found. The values don't align, one of them is actually a 20k and another is a 12k resistor but since they basically work as voltage dividers it doesn't really matter.

I designed a 3D printable case with two mounting screws to attach it to my shelf and hid the LED strips in aluminum tubes with milky glass for decent diffusion.

Super Happy how it turned out

Discussions

Dave wrote 06/09/2024 at 19:10

Interesting recycling of this box.

I've never seen a contrast / brightness, etc. control panel like this, and it gives me an idea for my thelightherder.com project. Controls like this would allow for being able to see at a glance the state of the different parameters, unlike the control knobs, which spin forever. I don't know if something like this exists for HD monitors - maybe something that could be created?

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ZenVega wrote 06/09/2024 at 21:58

Hi Dave, thanks! What a great machine you build. Nice woodworking too!

I am not an expert here but my assessment is, that since the controls on the panel don't have a range but turn endlessly, they are probably rotary encoders and don't know about their position but can only send increase or decrease signals.

I guess you could use a microcontroller and some variable slide resistors to send GPI signals via the GPI connector but you wouldn't have feedback on the controls.

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Dave wrote 06/10/2024 at 00:41

Thanks!

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RGB LED controls from vintage TV panel

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