DIY: LED Clock Light with NO Hotspots (56k)

[silverbullet99]

man, soldering LEDs takes a lot of time & patience. Last night, I told my buddy we could convert his climate control and guages in his civic from red to blue in about an hour or two, thinking that he had bought the solderless LEDs. Turns out he had bought the LEDs that require soldering. We spent over an hour attempting to solder them and when we finally got one that looked good, it ended up being too big to fit in. In the time it took us to attempt to solder 1 LED, I could have replaced all the bulbs with regular, solderless LEDs.
That reverse LCD clock looks awesome. I want to see that DIY when v6p gets back up.

 

[shenaniganz08]

nice planning, how many LEDs do you have in the hvac?

Honestly I don't remember, it was probably the most intensive custom wiring/lighting Ive ever done

If i where to guess it would be somewhere around 20-22 LED's

 

[Devil-V]

Just finished the mod. Works great!
I simply bought a set of 4 x Prism Micro LEDs, that have built in resistors.

A general note tho, my PCB is different to the one in the first post. The solder point near the bottom edge is actually the negative terminal (as opposed to being the positive). Thankfully, it doesn't do any damage if the wires are in the wrong points, so just swap them around if it doesn't work.



As you can see... blue isn't really the best colour at night. I've stuck a few small cutouts of thin aluminium sheets from an old laptop hard drive chassis in the plastic casing to reflect the light as much as possible, getting a little bit of improvement.

 

[shenaniganz08]

ummm yeah that's some crappy lighting

check out how even my results were

woo hoo v6p is up and running here are the pics

LED's were sanded and then a drop of crazyglue was used to hold it to the board

 

[vorin]

yep, very nice result. i hope to polarize mine soon.

 

[matty2013]

Polarized FTMFW!!!
I wanna do that but not too sure how or where to buy polarizing film

Nice DIY, we both had similar ideas

V6performance is down, or else I would show you my results ( along with the reverse LCD DIY)

I've been too busy with school to make a full DIY

But here is my interior shot

 

[vorin]

well, i just polarized mine, and i'm very satisfied with the results. It looks very close to shenanigan's picture. unfortunately, my point-and-shoot camera doesn't do a good job at capturing what it actually looks like

matty, i can send you a half sheet (nearly.) It would certainly be enough to do your clock and odo. i'll sell it for $8. a whole sheet from 3dlens plus shipping cost me double that. email or paypal me at sigovorin at gmail

 

[Devil-V]

Crap

Trying to go overboard by attempting to solder 2 LEDs, now the clock segments aren't appearing (only the far right segment) even though the LEDs light up. Have I buggered up my clock? If so, where can I buy a direct replacement?

 

[matty2013]

well, i just polarized mine, and i'm very satisfied with the results. It looks very close to shenanigan's picture. unfortunately, my point-and-shoot camera doesn't do a good job at capturing what it actually looks like

matty, i can send you a half sheet (nearly.) It would certainly be enough to do your clock and odo. i'll sell it for $8. a whole sheet from 3dlens plus shipping cost me double that. email or paypal me at sigovorin at gmail

Did you put blue lights in there? Or is that with white lights?

 

[vorin]

it's white, the light that gets mostly blocked shows up as a dark blue like shenanigan's picture.