Neon PowerDown Question
 

Is there anyway to make your neon turn off when the system goes idle , much like your harddrive and monitor does. Anyway to maybe branch off of whatever power gets cut. I know it is through the monitor cable and the ide cable and not the power cables themselves , so this may proove difficult , but if anyone has any ideas please let me know and let's get this worked out !! it'd be sweet haha --bikr

If there is like...a message LED on the board or something that turns on when the system goes to sleep...you could tap a lead from that, tie it into a circuit so that when that Sleep Lead goes HIGH the Neon gets shut off.

Read up on your motherboard of course.

You could also uh...tap into the power cables themselves...measure the current draw of the devices that goto sleep...so when they goto sleep, the power drops off, the circuit goes and turns off the Neon.

I was thinking of the motherboard header as well, but I've never used it(sleep mode, etc..), so I'm not exactly sure how it works.

But if it does trigger when the PC goes into sleep, then I'd use an optoisolator connected to a transistor that drives a relay that turns off the neons. ;)

Yeah, cause I think if I hook a LED to my "Message LED" or some shit like that...an LED will go on or blink or something...

Rig a circuit up to that that is a one time trigger or something so that when that pin goes high at least once...it shuts the light off.

There are other details to work out, but it requires logic and my brain isn't built to well for logic.

there's a article at bit-tech where they used an IC chip to control the color LEDs to light up when they is HDD activity. Perhaps u can mod some wirings and make it so that u can have it powerdown ur neon when ur not using, though u have to have ur HDD at activity mode to have it turned on! :D

think this is it:
http://www.bit-tech.net/article/83/

didnt mange to get thru to the webby at time of posting, so search ard bit tech if i hit the wrong webby!

Thats pretty much the same thing I was thinking of, take the optoisolator & corresponding circuit & apply to the sleep light header on the mobo instead of the HD light for the listed circuit.