Can an LED be 20' from it's power source?

[Mbira]

Well, I had a zenlike moment in the shower this morning and realized that I can achieve 90% of my objective with one LED sent straight from the Arduino.  As John so aptly put it, "it's only time and money", and I have spent too much of both on this project at this point. 

With one LED, I can give the user a visual indication when any trigger has been struck and just have it go off after 10 seconds and wait for the next one.  That will take care of the main issue.  Then I can expand later if need be.

 

[JohnRoberts]

simple is good...

 

[Mbira]

Funny enough in my quest for the one led solution, I figured out how to make 8 LEDs do it off the Arduino without a separate driver chip.  Current should be plenty low as I'll only have two at a time lit. 

 

[Andy Peters]

Sorry I don't know what an arduino is.

It's an open-source microcontroller board based on an Atmel AVR. It's popular with the Make: magazine crowd, in spite of its flaws (like, for example, the guy who designed it didn't bother bringing out the debug pins to a connector).

Me? I'd choose an SiLabs 8051-variant. $39 JTAG dongle!

-a