My first board for the tail lights is now drawn.



Gonna print this up so I can mess around with the lay out today. Hopefully I'll get it all drawn over the weekend.

I'm glad you're using resistors instead of PWM.

I am using a PWM also. I need it to switch between marker and brake brightness; it's the easy way to do it.

OK, nevermind then. Unsubscribed.

Pwm?

Pulse Width Modulation.
This will explain it: Pulse Width Modulator PWM visual helper

I'm not sure why he doesn't like it; even the OEMs with LED lighting use PWM.

Think I've got the boards finalized/laid out for the tails now; only part that is an issue is where the tails curve down at the end (you'll see in the pictures).

I printed the boards out so I could figure out the layout and everything. I'm pretty happy with it; they came out perfect and everything is the right size and lines up.


I meant to pick up some Bristol board so I could cut some templates but forgot too. I then saw the Popsicle sticks I had kick around and had an idea.


Since the paper wouldn't flop around now, I laid out the board into the housing.



Here's the corner I'm talking about. I'm going to have to draw this in CAD and work with it in there.


I should have all the boards drawn by the end of the weekend! Cannot wait!

He must hate reliability, performance, efficiency and durability is all. Spend this much time on something might as well do it right

I've edited my last post; I'd like to keep any arguments out of this thread.

Ramsack and I have talked about it before and we've both got a different way of approaching this. I'm using PWM because that's what I want to use, if someone wants something different then they can research it.

NICE JOB.

I was wondering how to light up a Digital AEM Gauge.

That would require very little lights.

This is awesome

miguelmcv said:

NICE JOB.

I was wondering how to light up a Digital AEM Gauge.

That would require very little lights.

Click to expand...

SMD LEDs, a pain to work with but it is possible.

supereclipse said:

This is awesome

Click to expand...

Thanks.

Slowly making more progress on my board designs guys, almost done!

Alright, it's official the boards are all drawn.

I'll get some boring number out of the way first thing.
The tails lights will have 138 LEDs per side for brake/marker lights, 66 LEDs per side for turn signals and 147 LEDs for the center section.
The tail lights will pull 2.8A and the center section pulls 3.43A. Everything is voltage regulated to 9V.

I've spent hours and hours on the AutoCAD drawings for the boards. A lot of times I'd print something, cut it out and test fit it. I'd not any changes needed make them and try again. Here's a picture of this process:



The center section and bumper markers where by FAR the hardest for me to draw.


I called a local Industrial supply place this week and found out they had 1mm drill bits in stock so I went and got a bunch. Check out how small these things are!


I also picked up a Dremel Work Station which will function as a drill press.


I need to order more PCB boards, resistors, etching supplies, etc.
I'm also trying to contact the person I originally bought my PWMs from as I'm doing something different and can't use them now. If I can't get a hold of them I'll have to design my own.
I'm also working on the details for my sequencers (all my turn signals will be sequential) from another HIDP member.

That's it for now!

You are an electrical god, first the s2k cluster, now all of this, I would never know where to start with something like this....can't wait to see the final product.

Thanks. I'm no god though, I just enjoy electrical and wanted to do something different.

Got my el cheapo LED driver in from China this week. I finally got to play with it tonight.


I then hooked it up to the Cree XM-L to see if it worked right.


I then hooked my Multimeter up in line to check the current flow.
Here we are just starting off at 300mA.


Then 700mA (wow is this bright!).


Then I cranked it to 1300mA (OW my eyes!)


I wish my camera was better because man are these things bright! My camera can't quite catch it.

Here's some video of me messing around with it.


Order the parts needed for my PWMs this week. I've got the rest of the stuff on the way for etching my boards on the way.

I had to make some adjustments to my CAD drawings so I decided to take some screen shots and post the boards up. I was hesitant to do this at first I'll be honest; I didn't want someone to copy it all and be able to have their own boards. However the boards/drawings are not to scale in these photos and there are no measurements so it will be difficult to duplicate. Plus I intend to copyright them.

Bumper Turn Signals/Markers


Headlight Turn Signals/Markers


Rear Tail Light Turn Signals



All the turn signals are sequential and controlled by a microprocessor; they are ground switched hence the common power rail on the top of the boards and individual grounds.

Here's the center section boards.
Sides.


Lower.


Finally here's the Brake/Marker boards.




Last things I need to start soldering the boards are on the way.
Still working on the PWM stuff, I need to order some parts and build some things on the breadboards to see what works.

Last pieces of the puzzle have arrived today.
20 sheets of Press N Peel Blue from Dipmicro. The Kester 60/40 .031 solder and flux pen are from the local Electronic place.


Another 10 6x4 single sided and 2 big (I forget the dimensions off hand) double sided copper clad boards. The big ones will become my PWMs and power supplies.


Huge order from Digikey. Paste flux (in the silver cooler bag), PWM parts, SMD resistors, etc.


ABS Plastic sheet, I'll be cutting with down to enclose my center section again once I figure out how deep I need to make it.


My etch tank (Rubbermaid Cereal bin), Hydrogen Peroxide and Muratic Acid.


I printed off all my boards so I could test them out in there housings to make sure everything is perfect before I start soldering them. I'm going to start with the tail lights first. Only thing I think is going to be a pain is the sides of the center housing; the lower curved board. This is such a weird shape, I'm going to trim the paper and see what happens.



w00t!


I didn't screw it up too much, had to make some touch ups with a Shrapie. Most of my issues were caused by my printer not wanting to feed the PNP so I just taped it to a piece of regular paper and it worked perfect!

I started drilling some holes too. This is a tedious task; I'm going to get both main tail light boards done tomorrow and into the etch bath.


I need to do something with the front of the PCB, either paint it or some chrome vinyl.


Also added some text which is backwards, not sure how to mirror it in CAD.

For the text you want backwards:

Older versions of autocad will mirror the text with the mi command, although I have found with 09 and above it no longer does this. But I'm sure there is a way around this in new versions. I can figure it out for you Friday when I'm back in the office.

If you have any other autocad questions I should be able to help you with them as I have been working with it for the last 10 years.

Thanks!
I probably haven't touched CAD in 10yrs haha.

I found out you need to use the MIRRTEXT command, change it to a 1 and then mirror the test as you normally would.

gofer said:

Looks like you've got a big project on your hands, those LED builds always impress me because of the time and engineering thats put into them.

That last picture of VanIsleDSM's Talon tail light looks good, I'm just wondering how he cleared it like that.

Click to expand...

Going through the first page i was like, "doesn't seem TOO bad!" I mean anything electrical, to me, is hard work. But it seemed breezy till i started reading through page two, then opened page 3.. OH BOY!
GOOD LUCK, Truely, wish you the best.
Shit looks good now, can't wait to see what it looks like finished!

Keep up the good work!

Those are going to turn out amazing. Can't wait to see them finished.

Thanks guys.

I've got all the brake/marker boards for the center section laid out on to the copper. I need to drill the holes in them, trim them to size and etch them.
The main boards for both side tail lights are drilled and ready to go in the etch tank.

Been a while since an update; bout a month. Progress is slow because I'm working out of town and only home on the weekends. I don't always have time on the weekend to do anything with the boards. I did manage to get a few more boards drilled this weekend though.

Printing the designs to the PNP Blue.


Ready to be transferred to the copper clad.


Toner transferred and ready to be drilled.



All the boards drilled so far. This is all very time consuming but on the upside I haven't broken 1 of the drill bits yet.


I spent a LOT of time hunched over the drill press. The Dremel work station is a very nice piece for the price though.


The thin board I bought is really nice, I can easily cut it with a pair of scissors so getting it to conform to the curves of the tails shouldn't be a problem.
Here's the headlight turn signal board cut out.


Test fitted into the headlight.


That's it for now. Not sure when I'll get more work done on them.

Dude like !!! who are you? All I can say is wow.

Wow this is really impressive. I just bought a 2gb talon and wish i had the electrical know how to do this.