ha HA! good idea

 

lmaooo fit is stop FTW!!!!

I did try 2 make the dot blue but it wasn't visible b/c the red was dominating. Also, the police woulda pulled me over for one stupid ass dot....

 

I just find out something.. From the original JDM lamps (at the pic u hv post before), the color's almost red-orange (dunno if that colors comming from camera's fault)..

So, i tried to put some white led's (not Red) and it's nice... different look and almost the same color as on the pic... and it produces almost the same brightness as the stoplamps from taillights..

just want to share.. Thanks.. BTW, nice D.I.Y. and it's very cheapass...

 

No, it's not the camera. If you're buying LEDs, and you have a choice, get orange-red rather than red; it matches DOT red, and if you have them behind an existing red bezel, will show through better.

 

The lens-color is red, right? With using the white one, it will appears orange-red like mine.. i'll post the pics later..

Anyway,, have u guys seen the 3rd brake light from the BMW (especially 3 series)? i was wondering if i can make this thing as bright as BMW's..

 

We perceive a pretty wide range of the spectrum as various shades of red. OEM rear lights are toward the orange end of red, around 625nm. LEDs of that shade are usually described as "orange-red" in catalogues. If you are using bare LEDs, they'll be closer to the OEM shade, and if they're behind a lens, a bit more light will get through, since the lenses are made to pass 625nm best. But don't worry if you've got some other shade (mine happen to be deeper red, 638nm); you're not going to be stalked by cops with spectrometers.
Lamps showing a smallish number of very bright LEDs are using Luxeons or something equivalent.

 

hmmm is it illegal to have a 3rd brake light that spells out words in new york?

 

I don't think its legal anywhere, but if it looks pro enough, you might be able to get away with it. lol.

 

I really like this lamp and looking for it....
gonna get soon I hope....
not smoked.... it looks silvery white?? from a distance....

 

nice job

 

That is WAY COOL. How much to do one for me?

 

I looked through MA laws and there wasn't anything in there about a brake light having to be a certain shape or not being a certain shape. Just stuff about location, color, and wether it was flashing/blinking/oscilating (all a no no unless blinkers).

 

If you guys don't mind waiting a few weeks to get LEDs I can make some up for whoever wants them, i have a bunch of pre-drilled boards waiting to be made up.




I can make PLENTY more.


with the red reflector thing on


with the red reflector thing off.

 

I am going to make one with a different word. Just curious if you wouldn't mind posting a parts list for what you are going to use. The pics you posted look pretty nice!

Are you going to be ordering from mouser electronics?

 

I ordered my stuff from Ebay
these are the specific ones i got (eBay: 100 pc Megabright Red LED 5mm 25000mcd !Free Resistor! (item 320090437951 end time Mar-23-07 12:30:00 PDT))
if you go to they're ebay store you can find smaller quantities. It took me about 2 weeks to get them.

You're going to first want to figure out how many LEDs you're gonna use and get the specs from them and this website (LED series parallel array wizard) is what i used to figure out what resistor values to use.

For the board i used fiberglass coated with sheets of copper on both sides and used the circuit board layout machine at work to lay them out. But if you want to take the time to make your own circuit board I would suggest the "shirt iron on and acid" technique if you don't have access to a board layout machine. Heres a pretty good "how to" on how to do it. (HeadWize Projects - Etching a Printed Circuit Board with the Toner Transfer Method by Christopher Garber)

So how i layed the board out I used:
28 x 5mm LEDs
5 x 39 ohm 1/4W resistors (5 arrays of 5 LEDs each in series)
1 x 330 ohm 1/2W resistor (1 LED)
1 x 270 ohm 1/2W resistor (2 LEDs)

 

Thank you so much.

I am all about DIY, this is going to be fun!

I'll post the pics once I'm done.

 

DIY is so much better than pre-made, you actually LEARN something .

Good luck and cant wait to see what you come up with!

 

What's the typical forward voltage for each LED and what size resistor did you use?

Also, it could have been less messy if you had soldered the LEDs together and put one resistor between the (+) and the LEDs.
If you had done that, I don't think you would have needed any resistors.
I found some 8000mcd red LEDs whose forward voltage is 2.1 and max forward voltage is 2.5v.

So, 2.1v*6=12.6v and the voltage coming from the battery is 12v so the LEDs would require a bit more volts, no resistance needed. Even if the battery, for some reason, was working overtime, the max forward voltage (2.5*6=15) of the LEDs is still greater.

Don't take my word for it, but I think I'm right...I think.

 

I could have done that and i did test it, but the led's i bought werent' as bright as each led having it's own resistor. I bought the 12000mcd led's and the seller sent me free resistors and i wanted them as bright as possible.

 

heres the schematic that i drew up for how i hooked it up


the forward voltage that i measured on the leds was about 2.3v each, and the source voltage from the plug wasnt exactly 12v it was around 12.25v. so instead of hooking up 6 leds and only giving the leds about 2v each i put a current limiting resistor across a series of 5 of them so it would only
draw about 20mA. [{12.25v-(2.3v*5)}/.02A]=19.23mA