DISCLAIMER: Purpose of this thread is to help several orgers put together LED kits that they have purchased from me. However, I believe others will benefit greatly from the information presented here.

I NO LONGER HAVE ANY KITS NOR DO I MAKE ANY. THIS IS NOT INTENDED TO BE A HOW-TO THREAD, THERE ARE TONS OF WAYS TO ACCOMPLISH A PROJECT LIKE THIS.

 

bohead, juani, MaximaEvolution, MaXamillion: you guys have received already Word file from me that shows board legend and gives general instructions on how to solder components on the boards. I will repost those here a little later.
Google for anything youd like to know more about. There is tons of info out there!
Here is basic info: http://www.iguanalabs.com/basicdef.htm
Now, how things work in general:

LED (Light Emitting Diode): Two important variables to pay attention to:
1. Volts - how much power it needs to light up - RED 2.5V / WHITE (some of you got them) 3.4V
2. Amps - how much current they draw - RED 70mA (milliAmps) OR 0.07A (1A=1000mA) / WHITE 20mA

(Think the value represented in volts as the diameter of the water pipe and the value of Amps as the speed with which water flows in it).

Resistors - are used to "resist the power flow", thus they kick down how much Volts are running in a circuit.
Depending on how many volts is supplied into the circuit and how many volts is "eaten up" by the components (LEDs in our case), we will need to use resistors of different capacities to balance things out. Resistance is measured in "Ohm" units. E.g. 330Ohms. Also resistors cut the Volts down not by exact value but depending on circumstances (e.g. outside temperature), by a proximate value. In other words, their efficiency to cut volts down is understood as tolerance. E.g. resistor with a tolerance of 5% will drop the volts down to a certain number give-or-take 5% of that number.
All resistors are marked by color bands indicating its rating and tolerance. Certainly the smaller the tolerance the better.
Link to decode resistor color bands: http://samengstrom.com/nxl/3660/4_ba...e_page.en.html

Next great resource I used in creating circuits: Board Array Wizard: http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz

In my boards design I used parallel and serial chains. You can see there are 4 or 3 LEDs followed by resistor in a chain. now all those independant chains are connected to separately running ground and power.

Red lines are copper strings that run on top of the board, Green are on the bottom.

This board has only chains composed of 4 LEDs in each chain, and if we supply 12V to each chain, then we have 4 LEDs (4 x 2.5V) consuming 10V, thus we need to kill extra 2V to balance things out (otherwise extra voltage will damage the LEDs), so we use resistor for that. How do I know I need 33Ohm resistor? - Wizard told me! Thus with the help of the wizard you can figure what kind of chains you can run and what resistors to use. All you need to know is the specs of your LEDs, how many LEDs you use and how many Volts you supply to the board that houses the components.

A little more crowded board now, but same logic.

 

This info is so far enough for you to solder LEDs and resistors on the boards, so now is time for brainwashing and "please-do-not-screw-up" pray!

Soldering Components on the Perfoboard – DO NOT START UNTIL YOU READ AND RE-READ THIS SECTION ENTIRELY! THESE INSTRUCTIONS ARE TO BE USED IN COMBINATION OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND COMMON SENSE. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE IF YOU SCREW UP!

Perfoboard contains only 2 types of components: LEDs and resistors. In this set up, serial and parallel wiring is employed. Chains of LEDs in groups of 4 or 3 etc. are followed by resistor and then connected in parallel to Positive and Ground. Before you start soldering:

A.Keep in mind that resistors are not dependent on polarity, meaning it does not matter what leg goes into what hole. LEDs on the other hand depend on polarity, meaning positive legs have to go into positive holes (ROUND COPPER HOLE) and negative legs have to go into negative holes (SQUARE COPPER HOLE).

B.Components can and will be damaged by excessive heat. Never apply soldering iron for more than 2 seconds. If solder did not melt and affix properly, move on to the next component, and continue with the previous one after it cools down. Otherwise LED may prematurely go out.

First identify groups of LED chains in serial in order to determine the correct resistor that would complete the chain, e.i. count number of LEDs in a chain, plus consult legend
ATTENTION!!! Colors Legend:
RED – copper string on top of the board
GREEN – copper string on the bottom of the board
YELLOW – outline of the board and of the components

FOR EXAMPLE (See First Picture): In the left lower corner it is vividly seen how positive string goes to the positive leg of LED, which are then connected in series forming group of 4, then going from negative leg of last LED to the resistor and then to Negative string. Group of 4 to the right top corner is a little less obvious. Note how group of 3 LEDs starts at the top and then copper string in green goes to the forth LED located on the bottom right corner.

HOW DO I TELL WHICH LEGG OF LED IS POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE:

Notice how top left corner of LED is cut at an angle, while 3 others are square. Top 2 legs are Negative. Bottom 2 legs are Positive. LEARN IT BY HEART! Note how two legs of same polarity are on one side of diode and other two legs on the other.

 

BEFORE YOU SOLDER RESISTORS READ THIS:

This should keep you busy. Nest week I will cover PWM and Voltage regulation. BUT!!! You will ask why do I have in my legend resistors you gotta use if we supply 12V and ones if we supply 10V, where does 10V comes from?

We get 10V if we regulate our voltage, as a result 2V are wasted in heat.

Why do I care about regulating voltage? Because car does not supply constant 12V all the time, unlike power supply in your desktop. It jumps sometimes up to 14V, but occasionally a voltage or current spike can be much higher than that and that can damage LEDs. Now, I had my first set of tails using cheap HongKong 5mm leds for 2 years and never anything burned out (except one led after 2 weeks, likely because I overheated it when soldering). So to use or not to use voltage regulators is your call.

BENEFITS: Protects from current and voltage spikes, thus long life for LEDs. All car manufacturers have these on their LED tails or somewhere in the circuit.

DRAWBACK: Heat management and more wiring. The regulators I created are heating very much, despite my calculations that Amps were low and heatsinks had double capacity. Possible solutions: A. Use ventilator to create airflow and facilitate cooling. B. Affix regulators on car body itself so it would serve as one large heatsink. C. Use other regulators of bigger capacity so that heat would not be an issue.

Thus, if you decide to use regulator, you will need to have such that drops voltage no more than up untill 10Volts and might need to rerun wizard to see if resitors are all in order.

MaXamillion - your boards are done to get no more than 10V, so you must use regulator or something that will kick Volts down from 12V to 10V.

 

SOME MORE RESOURCES ON THE NET:

Piranha LEDs (chepaer but less quality too: http://www.besthongkong.com/index.ph...67fa1e34493878

Various Electronic Parts Distributor:
http://www.futureelectronics.com/
http://mouser.com/
From here I got most of my parts - CHEAP: http://www.digikey.com/
Another excellent distributor: http://www.jameco.com/

PWM Vendor:
http://www.ledcar.com/
http://www.quickar.com/tkit.php?session=O66wTsFL
http://www.web-tronics.com/dcmotspeedco.html
http://velleman.hobbytron.com/vseries.html

PWM in detail:
http://www.cpemma.co.uk/555pwm.html
http://home.cogeco.ca/~rpaisley4/LM555.html#2

Voltage Regulators in detail:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homep...den/page12.htm

LED Series Resistance Calculator
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homep...Bowden/led.htm

All you wanna know about physics:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/HBASE/hframe.html

 

WHERE DO I GET THE PCB? (Perforboards on which components are placed)

I used the software from http://www.expresspcb.com/
Download the software, familiarize yourself how it works and design a board to your preference. Then you can place manufacturing request to the factory right through that software.
Money Saving Tip: Once you designed all individual pieces, place them all on one single PCB sheet. Then once PCB comes just cut into pieces. There is also a tool to calculate cost of boards before you submit them for manufacturing.

No. Heating tails in the oven does not affect wiring or components. It is just not hot enough and not long enough.

About resistors, you will need certain kind depending on how may LEDs you have in one chain on the board and how many volts you are supplying to the board.
Read info regarding regulators above. As I said they get hot, but I did not experiment enough to see if that would create any problems - according to my calculations it should not and maybe that heat is all normal. But again my feeling is to get heatsinks of better capacity.
I am going to look at files I have on my desktop and will give you all calculations I have.

Exactly. Now let's assume you use regulators and supply only 10V. Then in the chain of 4 LEDs you would not need a resistor!, but just for safety and because Wizard says so, you use tiny 1Ohm resistor (and 39Ohm where you have 3 leds in chain). So depending on whether you gonna use regulators or not, part of resistors you will not be needing. You got so many resistors because I sent you 2 different sets dependingon whether you supply 10V or 12V.

 

The LM317 Voltage regulator I sent to you can handle 1.5Amps tops. I will later post a diagram where by soldering resistors of different values to different legs you "program" it to give out approximately 10V.
Now, as an example, I will calculate how many Amps inner parking/brakes board draws.

We have 6 chains (4 LEDs in each). Each LED is rated at 70mA. How many Amps does each chain draw --> 70mA (NOT the sum of all 4 LEDs - because they are connected parallel to the source voltage (and in series to each other), does not make too much sence but this is how a knowlegeble member from HIDPlanet.com told me to calculate, so remember it).

Thus, 6 x 70mA = 420mA. Since LM317 is rated at 1.5 MAX, you can safely run one more board from same regulator. Thus, knowing how much each set of LEDs drwas, you design the harness accordingly.

Here is another good resourse to "program" LM317.
http://www.muzique.com/schem/lm317.htm

I also have the diagram of the switch circuit employing transistor but cannot find at the moment.

 

Here is a diagram, scroll to page 5.
http://www.lotusenthusiasts.org/Newsletter/V5-10.pdf

You have the resistors of those values. I did some more research and see that I just might have used heatsinks that are not up to the challenge of LM's heat. Research http://www.digikey.com/ for beffier ones.

Now here is how I mounted them inside, but you are free to do it your way.

 

YES! Locate brake, parking lights and ground (for brake/parking) on the STOCK harness and tap into them the three wires that come out of control box correspondingly.

Hmm, could you take a picture and show me. It was a while since I did that set so I do not remember exactly how I wired everything in there (my bad on not taking notes).

No it does not matter what side, driver's or passenger's. About red wire, take a picture and post here, I do not remeber the wiring inside.

Also the harnes you have, short one run along the fore side of trunk - that is for outer tails. Long one run into the trunk lid, that is for inner tails.

1. That is PWM (Pulse Width Modulator) board.

2. Inner brake boards draw 420mA each, so I wired them to one regulator. Outer brake boards draw 560mA each (8 chains X 70mA) and I also ran them to common regulator (560 + 560= 1120mA so regulator still can handle that). Then I ran inner turns from same regulator, outer turns from same regulator, inner reverse from same regulator and outer reverse from same regulator. In total 6 regulators!

3. In the 2nd PIC on top right "regulator looking thing" with a heatsink is actually a Transistor. What does it do? It switches the circuit to a stable ground (as opposed to interrupted one from PWM) when you hit brakes (see description obove on how PWM works).

4. About heatsinks, I think heaving better heatsinks will solve the heat problem, but placing all of them in a confined box might defeat the purpose - need some ventilation there, or could affix them just on outer walls of the box.

5. LED flasher simply replaces stock one.

Yes. Look at resources links above. I know some membersfrom HIDPlanet.com and Kevlo I believe too used Quickcar PWM.
http://www.quickar.com/tkit.php?session=O66wTsFL
Part # ML-804. It is rated at 20 WATTS max, so 20W/12V=1.6A

Now our brake boards draw 560 + 560 + 420 + 420 = 1960mA OR roughly 2A. So this PWM is not strong enough, thus you will need 2 to split the load or find something else. You can use the one I used, Valleman PWM, rated at 6A, but it is complex and overkill for this application (costs $20).

You might have tapped into the ground for blinkers. Find ground for brakes.

That definitely can work. I do not see why not. You just can get 2 quick car PWMs. Might need a bigger box though. About fan, that can work too. You just can wire it to turn on whenever any of the regulators turn on.

Hold on! Do you want to use regulators or not?
If not, then you use resistors according per file I e-mailed to have boards running off 12V.
If you do, then you use resistors to have them feed off 10V.

Yes, so you see you cannot regulate it to give out 12V since car will not always be giving you over 13.5V for that to work. So just go with the resistors to make boards work on 10V. Also there are resistors (in a set I sent you) to solder to regulators to give you 10V (see PDF file I posted earlier for guide).

As to the boars, YES some boards will have to be flipped. VERY important not to mess up! That earlier picture shows how it needs to be. I'll post enlarged version later.
White LEDs go inside and reds are on the sides. Also I noted I have more red LEDs left than I thought. Maybe I cut someone short when counting. Let me know if you run out.

Yes, you would be better of using regulators, BUT the way they work they "eat" 2V while regulating, that is why they give away only 10V after you supply 12V. For that reason you should use 1Ohm, 39Ohm etc. resistors so your boards would not be underpowered (meaning you created them to run off 12V but give them only 10V). You see? Let me know if you are still confused, maybe I can rephrase it.

Well, I see what you say. To be honest I do not know enough about inside workings of the regulator to answer this question. Over time everywhere I stumbled upon regulators in my research I read it that eats power when regulating, but those sources did not offer any further discussion or they ways to avoid it.

See the link I posted earlier about calculating resistor values to get 12V. Post your findings on HIDPLanet.com in their LED section and see what response you get. There are some very knowlegable members there.

I used black or clear RTV sylicon that can be purchased in Autozone. It is easy to work with, stick well (make sure you clean all surface well) and easy to cut and clean up in case you need to remove thw boards. Does not melt when you heat up tails to put lenses on also.

 

lookin at everythin again, I understand why you only used 7 heatsinks.. you must have wired two boards to one of them?

So essentially, all I would need is 4 regulators and wire two boards to each of them. But then, wouldnt that mean more heat out of each of them? Then again, If I had 8 individual heatsinks in there it would cumulatively be the same, correct?

That LED flasher replaces the stock one correct? Does it just drop right in or do I need to wire it in?

 

I will try and take some better picks at sunset...they look a lot better in a photo then.

 

I cannot answer your question from the technical point of view, unfortunately. But, when I was doing my research, predominantly on HIDPlanet.com, knowledgable members strongly discouraged resistor approach for dimming purposes. I do not remember exact reasons, but one of them was that if you limit the current, combined with the fact that alternator sometimes has current spikes and drops the current in the line, there could be not enough current to power the LEDs. With PWM you do not have that problem. But think about this way - experienced members go this route and car manufactueres go this route, so it must be the right one. If you want to look into this more, see LED section on HIDPlanet.com.

 

Yes, correct (for red LEDs). I did not get your e-mail. Did you e-mail me?

 

This pic is a lot better.


here's just another random pic of the car.

 

I do not know how far you guys are but here is a last bit of important info, maybe you already researched it on HIDPlanet.

See this schematic...


A round element to the left from LED board is transistor. It acts as a switch. When it is not active, the charge has nowhere to run but back to PWM, which switches ground on and off (in my case, using Valleman PWM) and thus does not let LEDs to fully power up. However, when it is powered (when you hit brakes, follow wirng to see) switch locks in and connects negative from the board to a solid ground and thus LEDs can fully power up and light up bright, serving as brakes.

 

1) On the schematic you have on couple posts up, there's a volt reg. before PWM. Which one did you use? I don't see why you put a volt reg. before PWM when you put programmed LM317T before all the brake LED boards.

What schematic do you refer to, right above your post? Could you post it so it would be clear?

2) Did you use diodes on your circuit?
Yes, N4001 I believe, you can see them in the shcematic above your post.

3) Which resistor did you use before TIP31 transistor?
270 Ohm Resistor

 

Hey Ladzio. Must say I'm loving these tails and getting a lot of attention from random people asking me where i got them. Anyway, when I step on my brakes the parking lights go on. What do you think it can be?

 

Could you provide a little more detail because I do not remember what setup you have. How are your lights wired, maybe you have some pics so I could refresh my memory. It's been a year since I worked on these :P

 

Ok, I'll try to take some pics when I get home. Thanks.

 

Here is a pic of the connectors which are connected correctly...


And heres a pic of the wires that I spliced into...


The red wire from the control box is spliced into the red/blue wire. The white wire from the control box is spliced into the red/green wire. And the ground wire from the control box was spliced into the parking light wire at first and then grounded to a bolt to try and fix the problem. I thought that the problem was that the ground was spliced into the parking light ground. But I dont think so anymore because I switched the ground.

 

When you step on the brakes, parking lights go on:
1) Specify what parking lights: all, front, your dash, or only small bulbs on sides?
2) I have a feeling in that control box I might have forgot to put one diode, but I'll be able to figure more once I get answer to point 1.

 

When I step on the brakes, all my lights go on as if I have turned on the parking lights with the stalk. The front corner lights, the tail lights, and all the interior lights go on.

 

Good.
1. Next, when did you first notice that, as soon as you installed the LED tails, or maybe you did some rewiring?
2. Try to install your stock tails and see if the problem persists.

Let's try to narrow down the cause.

 

I never rewired anything...just plugged everything in. It probably has been happening since the beginning but I haven't noticed because I usually drove the car at night.

 

Try to install your stock tails and see if the problem persists. This will really help to see whether control box is the problem or something else.

I never had this problem before with my tails so your cooperation is essential

 

I will try to install my stock tails once this weather has passed and will update as soon as possible.

 

I was thinking things over and I think I know what the deal is. I am coming back to CT for summer vocation after memorial weekend and we might meet up some time after that and troubleshoot this sucker.

 

Sounds great to me man. I haven't had the time to switch out the tails with finals coming up and all.

 

For those that are reading this thread to get a clue how to make own LED tails set here is what the problem potentially is:

As you know PWM is needed to dim LEDs so that they would light up with intensity of parking lights. Thus, when you flip your parking lights switch on you send power to PWM (we tap into parking lights wire for that) and PWM then send power to tails, finally "charge" going back into PWM "ground wire" and from PWM into ground wire that we tap into the harness (see description above for how PWM works).

When we hit the brakes, brakes wire gets charge at which point we split it into to paths. (1) brake wire we tap into parking lights wire (with current limiting diode N4001 in between so that power runs from brakes to parking only) in order to light up LEDs; (2) brake wire we tap into transitor that is connected to the solid ground, thus activating a bypass around "switching" ground of PWM to teh solid ground in order to let LEDs fully light up.

The problem I believe is that when we hit brakes and send current into the parking wire, not only it activates PWM but also send current throughout the whole car parking light system. To remedy this we just need to install another N4001 current limiting resistence to direct current flow to PWM only.

I hope this makes sense, I will draw a diagram after I make sure this solution works.