“These are a great upgrade for the Picade. The quality is good and the illumination effect is just bright enough. Not too keen on using the button lead connectors to hold the PCB in place, but it's still a clever idea how to do it without any soldering. Buttons feel exactly the same as those on the original Picade. Could use some more detailed documentation how to control the LEDs on specific buttons.
The kit should come with a longer host lead to connect the Plasma kits into the Picade X HATs Plasma specific connector. It comes with a simple breakout host connector, but as it's intended to upgrade the Picade and the latest version has the bespoke Plasma connector, the exclusion of a host connector with the Plasma connector is a bit strange. Maybe the future version will come with both host connector cables.”
“One of the best upgrades for you PiCade arcade machine or your own home build! Simple to install, simple to configure and they look absolutely gorgeous. I'm using the default script supplied that rotates a rainbow of colours through your buttons, however you can modify each button individually should you want to light up relevant buttons or fit with your colour scheme, so what are you waiting for? Get them, they're mesmerising!”
“This turned out to be a fairly easy upgrade, especially doing it while I was doing the build. Just following the instructions and loading the default "driver" gives me a nice glowing set of buttons that makes the Picade look a little nicer. I haven't looked at customizing the lights for different games, but it looks like it will be fairly doable using Runcommand in Retropi (https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Runcommand/). Definitely this has been a worthwhile upgrade.”
“What a nice feature to add to the picade. The buttons are well illuminated and the provided control scripts work pretty well.
just two things are a little bit annoying:
- First, the clear glass, I think I would have preferred a blurrier glass.
- The second one is how the LED PCBs are hold (barely). You can't clip them, you just hold them with the connection spades. This makes the PCB wobbly. However, I agree with the tutorial : "Don't worry too much if the wires cause the Plasma PCBs to not sit completely flat on the back of the button. Even if they're at a little bit of an angle, they'll still shine all of their light through the button".
Overall, the product is a really nice feature (a little bit expensive though). It gives a nice touch to the picade.”
