Picade Plasma Kit - Illuminated Arcade Buttons

by Pimoroni

Add technicolour brilliance to your Picade or Picade Console with this addressable RGB LED arcade button kit, available in a 10-button kit (all buttons).

Swap out your Picade's arcade buttons for the crystal clear ones in this kit, pop one of the Picade Plasma PCBs over the button's spade terminals, hold the PCB in place with the spade connectors, and chain all of the Plasma PCBs together with the included cables. Use the host cable to connect the Plasma chain to your Picade X HAT, install our Picade Plasma software, and BAM, your Picade is 110% more colourful!

Each Picade Plasma PCB has four tiny, addressable, RGB LEDs (APA102) and a data in and data out JST connector. They're designed to fit neatly inside the recess on the back of our low-profile arcade buttons and shine their light through the clear plastic. The white PCB bounces an spilled light from the LEDs to give them extra GLOW.

Kit Contents

  • 10x clear 30mm push-fit arcade buttons
  • 10x Picade Plasma PCBs
  • 5x 10cm button cables
  • 4x 30cm buttons cables
  • 1x 30cm host cable

Picade Plasma Features

  • APA102 addressable RGB LEDs
  • Chain-able
  • JST ZH connectors for data in and data out
  • Designed for our low-profile arcade buttons
  • Connects to the Hack Header on our Picade X HAT
  • Python daemon for Retropie/Raspberry Pi OS

As well as using Plasma buttons with Picade and Picade X HAT, you can connect them straight to GPIO on your Pi, or other microcontroller. This makes them ideal for DIY arcade builds and even building things like your own DIY midi controller.

You can read our tutorial on fitting Picade Plasma buttons to find out how to fit the buttons and control them with the Picade Plasma software.

Notes

  • PCB dimensions: 24mm diameter, 5.75mm thick (including JST connector)
  • LED brightness is limited to a sensible level in software. Adjust this at your peril!
  • Picade Console is for illustration only, and not included!
  • Please note we've tested our Plasma Python daemon with Retropie/Raspberry Pi OS only - getting it to work with other distros (especially non-Raspberry Pi OS based ones) might be more complicated. You might find it easier to look for a native APA102 library for your chosen OS!

13 customer reviews

4 years ago
The effect is fantastic! It took me a little bit of tweaking the script before it worked, and I had a bit of bad luck removing the old buttons, so I think it is best to order this kit with your new Picade before you put it together. All in all, an essential upgrade to an already excellent product (Picade)
by Martijn about Picade Plasma Kit - Illuminated Arcade Buttons via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
Works really well, easy to install, and the software opens a lot of features to do with the lighting system. I especially love the usage of plasmactl to use png files to animate them at selected framerates. Thanks!
by Anonymous about Picade Plasma Kit - Illuminated Arcade Buttons via REVIEWS.io
4 years ago
These buttons look very nice, but they are a real pain to get hooked up, and there's no integration with RetroPie (For example, it'd be awesome if the coin button flashed yellow when you're on an enter-coin screen, and if the non-functional buttons in a game turned off). One of the connecting wires in my kit was misconfigured, which prevented the Picade from turning on at all. Diagnosing that was a challenge, but the helpful support team at Pimoroni helped me fix the issue myself (they offered to ship a replacement wire, but I preferred to fix it).
by Brian about Picade Plasma Kit - Illuminated Arcade Buttons via REVIEWS.io
6 years ago
I'm using this to build a tiny batak machine. You must follow standar installation instructions, then disable the plasma deamon and everything will be ready to manage Plasma using python library. It would be nice if some kind of led fixation is designed, I know, that means to modift the plastic button mold, but that's requierd if no standar faston connector is used.
by Marcos about Picade Plasma Kit - Illuminated Arcade Buttons via REVIEWS.io