I get the whole jist of wiring. Ive wired up all the lighting on my 4runner so far but im absolutely stumped about wiring up some leds. How do you wire the actual lights to the circuit board? Also where do you get this board from? Ive done searchs on YAhoo for led circuit board and led wiring board and bunch of other combinations but cant find the actual board. Can someone point me in the right direction as to where to get these boards from and how to wire them up to the boards themselves.

 

hmm, can you clarify?

what are you talking about? where and what is this being used for?

you don't need "boards" or anything like a micro controller, you just hook 'em up, and with anything electrical you need to provide the correct voltage/current blah blah, so you may need a resistor ins series with the led, all of this can be combined ON a board.

 

if you are soldering on new LED's onto the old speedo/cluster board then that makes sense, otherwise I'm not really sure what you're trying to get outta this

 

But the leds in question, like the supeflux ones from illumids (sp?) are just the light and little metal wires comin out the bottom. You have to wire these into a board correct? I assume you just cant connect them straight to a wire right? Im trying to make my own version of steve's rocklights and paddlenbikes footwell lights.

 

ok, you can just connect them to wires i believe... send me a link or link to pic to be sure, you could use a board... they are just a 1-2mm thick piece with a ton of holes in it that you stick the wires through and solder in... if you just connected the wires all up, then you could set everything in hot glue or epoxy to finish

 

if you went the board way you'd have to get "strip-board"



taken from http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/stripbd.htm

 

Here are the lights in question. might now actually get these ones but its the same principle.
http://www.lumileds.com/products/line.cfm?lineId=4 same ones as paddlenbike used.

I don' think id like the idea of just wiring the leds directly with wire as they would be more likely to break. I want a sort of board to wire them to but can't seem to find anything. Does radioshack have just plain boards that i would need to use or do you need to buy a special "led" board or what?

 

i dont see the pics

 

post fixed. sorry bout that.

 

k, yeah, i googled and got the same site i would just solder them, any type of snap in base seems prone to problems. to solder stuff like that i use a very small set of locking needle nose pliers, i attach these right at the base of the component, they act as a heat sink to ensure that a ton of heat doesn't ruin the component

 

any ideas on the board itself? don't know where to get any type of board that would work. radioshack?

 

http://www.futurlec.com/ProtoBoards.shtml

search google for "stripboard" "veroboard" (trademark name) and look around at PCB (printed circuit board) although PCB is really not what you want

 

so are the stripboards my only option?

 

unless someone else chimes in, thats the only thing i see, or make your own outta plastic or wood

 

Im thinking about just making my own out of some thin plastic. I was kinda hoping that someone who has done it before would chime in but i guess not. Time for some PMs! Thanks Andrew.

 

Hey Kyle;

Kudos to you for jumping into this with both feet. It's hard to get into building circuits when you have a grasp of the concept but not the words to explain what you're wanting to do.

RatShack sells a "proto board" (prototyping board) that will give you something to solder the LEDs to. Start here:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...ductId=2102846


That board is designed such that you can interconnect components in various ways depending on how you place parts on the board. It'll make more sense once you get the board in your hands so you can see the back side.


You'll also need an entry level soldering kit and instruction:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...ductId=2062759

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=how+to+solder


While you're at Shack, pick up up some random small gauge wire. When you get home PRACTICE soldering until you get comfy with the concept and the methods. It takes practice to make it 2nd nature.

HAVE FUN!

 

Superflux led's have 4 posts. 2 anode, 2 cathode. You really only need to wire 1 anod and 1 cathode lead. The other feat are for stabilization purposes for automotive situations. You don't necessarily have to wire them to a board, but it makes things cleaner and somewhat easier. Here are a few pics of an array I made consisting of 12 superflux leds. I just used the largest pcb radio shack had and cut it to the sizes I needed. Don't just get regular perf board, it's much easier when the board has the copper pads. Granted I'm just going to start etching my own pcbs and doing it that way. It will make it much easier than wire wrapping... it will also be a lot cleaner looking than wire wrapping. I'll get some shots of the array on my wife's Yaris which the array is for. I made it for her 3rd brake light. I also replaced the red fluted lens with a piece of polycarbonate lens. I hand carved the lens, frosted it, then painted the edges a flat black for a border. Also, don't forget to seal up the back when you're done soldering to make sure the copper and solder don't corrode/oxidize. I used silicone II on this board , but have spray lacquer for the next boards I make. OH!! If you notice, I hadn't wired up the resistors yet. I make 4 strings of 4 superflux leds. Each string needed a 330 ohm resistor. Remember, when wiring led's, the less in a string the better for longevity. 3-4 leds per string is ok.

 

First off, thanks Mark and Kevin for the links and pics.

To start, im gonna head out to radioshack and grab a board or two, some resistors, small guage wire, and some leds just to mess around with. Ill post back when i get everything ready and start actually trying to do stuff.

From Kevins pictures it looks like im about to get way in over my head. Alright so the jist of what I got is that one side of the led is a cathode (-) and anode (+). To run them all in parallel, for the brightest light, you need to run all the cathodes in line and all the anodes in line. In order to run them in a 12v circuit you need to place resitors inline with the lights. For blue and white leds the require more voltage? so you need a different resistor rating. Im not sure on the math but i read somewhere that a 4xx somethin or a 330 was what i needed for white and blue. So i run the resistors in line with EACH led seperately. Is all that correct?

So for the board, I need to place the leds in such a way that I can create a path from all the cathodes to the - and all the anodes to the +? And i go about doing this by carefully poking out all the little copper holes in order to create a path?

Am i catching the jist of this, or am i just way to off to even considerin trying this on my own?

 

Don't be afraid to do it. I actually sort of messed up on the layout. If I had to do that particular array over again, I would have centralized all the negatives in the middle and just had four jumper wires for positives centralize elsewhere. Notice how I only have little jumper wires from each led from 1 cathode to 1 anode. I just made a little design out of the jumpers on the back to keep things away from eachother.. and also keep it interesting Here are some links that will help you out a lot.

http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz
http://www.hidplanet.com/forums Just register, then go to the led subforums

Here's a pcb I plan on etching very soon for superflux leds. Feel free to use it if you decide to etch a board. Unless you want to design your own. I designed it to be modular so you could connect more of the same boards in one direction (due to it being only single layer pcb). Once I learn to make multiple layer pcb's... it's all over, the possibilities will be endless. But, I can still make large arrays with multiple boards like this one:



Here's a revision of that same board... note that it is not mirror image. I also removed all the holes and a lot of the writing. As I want to silkscreen the words on the board not have them etched in copper. I also made some of the traces wider thus creating less resistance.



I've just ordered some 3mm x 2mm PLCC-2 surface mount leds that I will be able to use this board with. Though I'm just going to etch different designs that I make. The PLCC-2 leds will be used to backlight my heater controls, my gauges, and possibly my dome lights. But for my map lights, I will probably use a higher intensity led like paddlenbike used with his footwell projects. The plcc-2's have a capacity of 20ma, where the superfluxes that he used can handle up to 80ma! I'm sure you saw how bright his lights were... Also, remember, don't just assume that you have a constant 12 volts in your vehicle. Take a DMM and take readings. I usually resistor everything to 14.5V - 15.5V depending on spikes in voltage from the alternator. I hope this thread has helped ya!

One more thing... when buying boards from radioshack... be very wary of the silkscreened outlines on the top of the board. I bought one once that had the outlines backwards and it kind of confused me... soo...

 

Kevin you just confused the crap out of me! Those last pictures just totally lost me. So with the first pictures, the smaller guage wires are just jumpers from where you had to continue either the postivie or negative path or what? So I was wrong, you have to connect the cathode and anode? Can you please use like...lamens terms. I get some of it but big words confuse me