I need help with a gaming-related electrical project

[Benn Roe]

Among the nerdy tabletop games I play is Warhammer 40,000, where I roll dice to see if my little plastic space dolls can blow up my opponents' little plastic space dolls. One of the armies I play is the T'au Empire -- high-tech space-imperialist-communist alien-fish-people -- who seem to be the only army in the grim darkness of the far future to have discovered laser scopes for their guns. In-game, that means I can accumulate up to 5 markerlight tokens on a unit to gain extra benefits against it when shooting it with my other guns. I keep finding, though, that using dice to keep track of these markerlight tokens inevitably just means I leave those dice on the table when I'm done shooting, and confuse myself in later turns. So, I'm looking for something more eye-catching to use in the hope that I won't be able to forget to remove it when I'm done with it, and (as usual) I have an idea that exceeds my abilities. Behold:

IMG_0993.JPG (33.53 KiB) Viewed 821 times

What are you looking at? Well, it's an expert MS Paint rendering of a piece of acrylic with 5 LEDs embedded in it, jammed onto a Warhammer base. The button, I'm hoping, can turn on an additional LED each time it's pressed, or turn them all off once all five are on. The battery would live under the base. I feel like I've seen LEDs embedded in acrylic with effectively invisible wiring, but I could be imagining that. Someone also mentioned a pen that lets you draw point-to-point "wiring" on a variety of surfaces. Again, the "how" is where I need help. I just want it to look like the markerlights are locked onto the unit I place it next to. It's not guitar gear, but I imagine it's a simple circuit for gearheads, so I figured I'd see if anyone here can help me figure out how to bring this idea to life, and/or help me build a few of these.

The bases I use for this army are these:

They're solid resin, so I'll need to carve out room for the battery, etc. I would prefer to use 25mm or 32mm-diameter bases, but could be talked into 40mm. Any bigger than that, and it might be too obstructive.

Anyway, any thoughts?

[spacelordmother]

Cool project!

Not sure about the “invisible” wiring, but often these sorts of things are actually edge-lit. In this case that means your display icon can look like whatever you want as it’s just etched into the acrylic.

Regarding the circuit, seems like this could put you on the right track: https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/threads/how-to-make-a-row-of-led-lights-light-up-individually.21769

[JonnyAngle]

Slm on point. It’s fiber optic.

But you could have separate pieces with a thin light barrier to make it “5 sections”. You’d need 5 leds then.

I think you’re going to want5 leds wired in parallel. Otherwise they’ll get progressively more dim each time one is added.

http://cdn.instructables.com/F2G/HBDB/G ... .LARGE.jpg