Farewell Incandescent Lighting (96 Talon TSI AWD LED Conversion)

[Blurred Talon]

Well when I posted that last post.I had a close up..IT will get more on the bottom..Probably gonna get that going tonight actually..


The bottom is gonna get more indeed..Especially on the tails..The middle I'm not sure what to do yet.

What are you lighting it with?

Where did you find the "red-amber" leds? All I've found are amber or
red. I've googled and yahooed and couldn't find'em I've been checking this thread to see if anyone ask's but I couldn't wait any longer. I'd appreaciate your direction.

What exactly are you looking for PNP bulbs or actual LEDs?
If it's LEDs themselves then try ebay (search HPWT to find Lumileds). Future Electronics, Digi-key, Mouser, etc all sell LEDs (Osram, Phillips, Cree, etc.)

I bought both of my bricks of 1200 amber and red-orange LumiLEDs from eBay of a screaming deal; under $200.

 

[Bud92gsx]

Yeah man I bought all mine off ebay..1200 white and 300 red.Screaming deal, except one roll.I accidently won to many auctions..

I received 600 white with 3 leds per inch..Then all the other ones came with 3 leds per 2 inches.

All I really know is smt led..I'm not that big of a teckie.

 

[Blurred Talon]

Oh so those Chinese SMT strips.
Best of luck with them.

 

[Bud92gsx]

Yeah kinda..But you will be happy when I tell you I have only had one tiny set of 3 burn out..

And I think I hit one or two of those with the solder gun..But every other one has worked very well..China=Cheap,But in this case possibly just cheap $.

But once All of my projects are done.I will have to be done with these led modding projects for awhile.

 

[Blurred Talon]

Well some minor updates.
First here's a video of what the Front turns will look like. I of course have to rebuild this board because it needs more LEDs.
2G Talon LED Sequential Front Turn Signals - YouTube

Here's the new brick of Red-Amber LEDs I picked up. G13 bin, I think I've got the right resistors but I need to run my math again.

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I picked up more PCB material from ABCFab on eBay, Bill is awesome and his stuff is top notch! FR-4 .030 thick black backed 1/2 oz (if memory serves me right) copper.

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I also built the back to my center section out of plastic recently. I need to fit the tail lights on to the car to get the spacing correct.

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I did try to fit the back piece to my friend's car but I found out that there were 2 stand offs on the tail lights that stopped it from sitting as deep as I wanted. In the pic below you'll see the right one has this stand off and the left one has been removed.

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Both removed.

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I also bought some Dynamask 5000 from Octamex in Germany. This stuff is a UV exposure dry solder mask film. I'll have to build myself a UV light box but it will really allow me to step up the quality of my boards.
I've also got some Pusler White TRF so I can make a silk screen of my own too. I really want my home made boards to look as professional as possible.

I've completed redrawing my boards to house more LEDs and also have plug and play connectors, no more jumpers.

I'm also researching microcontrollers so I can do some more interesting things with my tail lights.

 

[4Lurker4]

I wouldn't have the patience to mess with electronics like that, but love the work you do! Can't wait to see it when it's all done

 

[Blurred Talon]

Thanks Guillaume.
Being an Electrician certainly helps, though the stuff I work with is much more mundane then this.

 

[Bud92gsx]

I left you a question on purity

 

[GearheadJ]

Wow... This is something I'd much rather buy than build.. Awesome thread though !

 

[Blurred Talon]

I had to take a few shots with my new DSLR and post them.

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I'm also picked up a TI LaunchPad and MSP430 uC lately.

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I've installed Windows on my 2nd HDD so I can actually program this thing. However that's gonna be a while off as I need to do some heavy reading about them first. I've got a book that I'm working through.

I've been spending hours and hours in Autocad redrawing my boards. They are now two layer to allow for JST connectors so it can all be plug and play. Plus I've added solder masks and silk screen. Oh, there's also more LEDs per board now to avoid any hot spots.
Here's what it looks like.

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I also decided to run a little torture test on my old boards. I hooked up the 9V VReg, used fans to keep them cool, and left them on for 10 hours. They were running at 70mA and not a signal dead LED.
VRegs on the breadboard.

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Boards in the housing.

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All lit up with and without the lens. These things are friggin bright!

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I also bought 40 TLC5940NTs off eBay for a steal. I just need to figure out how to use them.

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I'm finishing off my UV exposure box so I can do my solder masks. I will hopefully start etch again in a week or two.
I also have to figure out how to work with the uCs and LED drivers.

 

[SuperTrooper]

Amazing, super impressed. I can't wait to see the finished product.

 

[Blurred Talon]

Been awhile since I've updated this so...

I redrew ALL of my LED boards again. This time I crammed as many LEDs in as possible, allow me to break it all down for you.
- 264 LEDs per tail light
- 147 LEDs for the center brake tail
- That's 675 LEDs just for the brake lights!
- TALON Name Plate has 176 LEDs.
- Rear Turn Signals have 138 LEDs per side, 276 total!
- Front Headlight Turn Signals/Markers have 32 LEDs per side, 64 total!
- Front Bumper Turn Signals/Markers have 52 LEDs per side, 104 total!
- 1031 LEDs in total, that's 4124 holes I have to drill in total for soldering these things to the boards, FML!

Printing the designs to the PNP Blue.

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Since my boards have sat for a while I had to clean them, bit of time with some steel wool and they are ready for the designs to be transferred.

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I picked up a GBC H220 Laminator a while back and modified it to run slower. It works so much nicer then my old iron for transferring the PNP blue to the boards.

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Etched and ready for drilling.

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2316 holes later, yawn! My back is shot btw.
I cleaned the toner off the boards with some paint thinner, hit them with steel wool again and lastly some Isopytpol Alcohol. Then it I soaked them in MG Chemicals Liquid Tin. This stuff is the cat's ass, tins the board in about 3-5 minutes and will protect the copper from oxidizing.

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From top to bottom, name plate boards, Brake light boards, headlight turn signals/markers and bumper turn signals/markers. This should keep me busy for a little bit.

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I'm going to start soldering up all those boards tomorrow, I'm waiting on a shipment of resistors from Digikey.

I've finally started learning more about my MSP430 finally so I can start building my controllers for each housing.
The rear tail light controller will be interesting, it will control normal parking and brake lights plus do some sequencing for when parked. I'm think I will have a bluetooth module in it to control the 'Show' functions via my Android and maybe a display of some sort up front so I know what's going on back there.

Stay tuned!

 

[DJ Raydiate]

I keep seeing this and over on HIDP as well and it makes me want to jump on mine. I can't wait until I'm done moving. Right now I have all my stuff packed up and ready to move. I should get to start on mine sometime in May. Funny I keep pushing it back but eventually I'll get it done.

Keep up the good work man!

 

[Blurred Talon]

Thanks Ray.

I hope to have all boards etched and LEDs soldered to them by the end of the week. Then it's just hammering out my microcontroller design.

 

[Gulleysaurus]

Great stuff. I always enjoy reading through your threads.

 

[DJ Raydiate]

Anytime Anthony. I have a question about the sequentials though. I had read a thread over at HIDP that you had commented on about them being negative switched. Was that the case with the analog units as well? If that is the case, I will have to redesign my entire main control board. Also, how hard is it to deal with programing the microcontrollers?

 

[spyderdrifter]

Very impressive. Can't wait to see it all finished

 

[Blurred Talon]

Great stuff. I always enjoy reading through your threads.

Thanks!

Anytime Anthony. I have a question about the sequentials though. I had read a thread over at HIDP that you had commented on about them being negative switched. Was that the case with the analog units as well? If that is the case, I will have to redesign my entire main control board. Also, how hard is it to deal with programing the microcontrollers?

I'm honestly not sure how the analog ones are set up. It's been so long since I've messed with them and I've since sold the ones I had.
The MSP430 is programmed in C so if you've got experience with that it's not too bad. Myself on the other hand, I haven't touched computer programing in over 12 years.

Very impressive. Can't wait to see it all finished

Thanks.
Going to print off the last few boards and test fit them in a bit. If that goes well then I can transfer them to some copper and etch some PCBs.

 

[DJ Raydiate]

I gotcha. I just read through the entire analog thread over on HIDP again and I have my control board set up right. The cathode from the SCR goes to the Anode of the LED arrays.

I have no experience in programing anything other than universal remote controls . I guess that will be another day.

 

[Blurred Talon]

Got an order from Digikey last week - SMD resistors and Sharp 12V VRegs (just to have more on hand since they are discontinued). The bad thing is I can't count and didn't order enough resistors so I've got another order placed now.

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I did another rough design of my last tail light board, still not 100% happy with it though. I'm going to get all the other boards populated and then get them dry mounted into the housing and try this again.

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Transferred my turn signal boards and trimmed/test fit them. My first board had to be left a bit bigger but other then that, no issues.

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Soldering lots and lots of tiny SMD resistors. I also had to locally source some new SMD resistors for my bumper markers/turns because the ones from Digikey were too big. With these new resistors I had a small issue, they get soldered to the board vertically instead of horizontally; of course I noticed this after they were all soldered, D'OH!

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Many hours later almost all the turn signals on the car are finished.

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I also played around with my reverse lights. These are high power Cree XM-L LEDs powered by LuxDrive Buck Blocks at 2100mA. These will need a 20K Pot to adjust brightness as I will likely blind someone with them . I'll likely mount the pot in the center console so I can adjust it if need be when backing up.

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Just sitting there for now. I will figure out mounting later.

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These are crazy bright, I was thinking two of them per tail light but that may be overkill. I want to test them on the car before I make any final decisions.

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That's it for now. As I said I've got the last bunch of resistors on the way to finish the brake light boards. I also need some more PnP Blue to finish etching the last remaining brake light boards and make another one of the tail light turn signals as I mess it up when trimming.
Should have all the boards done by the end of next week.

I also have some dummy bulbs so my dome lights and rear cargo light can be simple plug and play.

Stay tuned!

 

[spyderdrifter]

Damn that's a lot of soldering..... looks good though.

 

[Blurred Talon]

I'm no where near done soldering.

Thanks though.

 

[DJ Raydiate]

It looks good man! Can't wait to see it all lit up.

 

[dharrison]

those look awesome

 

[Blurred Talon]

Finished soldering up my brake light boards. I can now temporarily mount them and draft up the 5th and final board for the tail lights.

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Here's a back of the boards.

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Here's a comparison to the previous version of the boards, you can see there are a lot more LEDs in the new version.

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I also started working on the dome lights again, I want to run a voltage regulator to save my LEDs.
First was installing some glazing points to mount the boards too (ala azdave).

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Couple seconds with my MAP torch to heat these bad boys up and then push them into the plastic.

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I picked up some of the dummy bulbs off of eBay to plug into the factory bulb holder so it will be plug and play.

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I still need to dye/paint the dome light housing seen in the pictures.
I also brought the center section boards back to the drawing board once again! I messed them up and had the LEDs facing the wrong way so they wouldn't light. Of course I noticed this AFTER I transferred and etched the boards, sigh.
I've also finally posted about the MSP430/TLC5940NT combo sequencer over on 43oh!

Finished soldering up my brake light boards. I can now temporarily mount them and draft up the 5th and final board for the tail lights.

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Here's a back of the boards.

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Here's a comparison to the previous version of the boards, you can see there are a lot more LEDs in the new version.

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I also started working on the dome lights again, I want to run a voltage regulator to save my LEDs.
First was installing some glazing points to mount the boards too (ala azdave).

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Couple seconds with my MAP torch to heat these bad boys up and then push them into the plastic.

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I picked up some of the dummy bulbs off of eBay to plug into the factory bulb holder so it will be plug and play.

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I still need to dye/paint the dome light housing seen in the pictures.
I also brought the center section boards back to the drawing board once again! I messed them up and had the LEDs facing the wrong way so they wouldn't light. Of course I noticed this AFTER I transferred and etched the boards, sigh.
I've also finally posted about the MSP430/TLC5940NT combo sequencer over on 43oh!