HOW TO: Make Your Own LED lights

JFD140

I would like to first of all give credit to guys like MarkClements and Microman for inspiring all this.

I decided to make this how to guide for all those who were interested in making their own leds from the \"Homemade Lights\" Thread. I a while back i promised i would do it and i wanted to show everyone that it is really not as complicated as you might think to make your own fully functioning led lights.

The benefits of making your own lights are numerous. For one, you can make them in any shape and size to fit wherever, however you want. You also have a variety of flash patterns to chose from, depending on the flasher you use with the lights. And the two best parts about making your own lights, ITS CHEAP! i made a 36\" lightbar for my windshield for under $200. And the other best part, is knowing that you made it yourself, and no one else has one like it. Every time you use it to respond to a call you can take pride in the fact that you took the time to make it yourself.

Lets get on with the guide.

The light I have made a guide for is a 24 LED 6\" Long, Split color light head. This is probably the simplest of designs to make aside from a solid color light head (but thats not fun!) The finished product will look like this:

Now lets get on with the how to portion of this thread.

First of all, you will need a basic understanding of how to work with LEDs and resistors. Here is so information that should give you a better understanding.

Web site on LED basics

http://led.linear1.org/category/led-basics/

Resistor and wiring diagram calculator

http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz

Place to buy LED diodes in all colors

http://stores.ebay.com/HKJE-Led-Lamp-Center_5mm-R-H-Superflux-LED_W0QQcolZ4QQdirZ1QQfsubZ732657QQftidZ2QQtZkm

First off, you will need to gather your materials and supplies. All of these supplies for the most part can be obtained at your local Radio Shack. The main things you will need are shown in the following picture and include:

1) A housing of your choice (i like aluminum channel and L pieces, they are strong and look decent on their own without painting or polishing)
2) 15w or 30w soldering iron
3) Wire cutters/stripper
4) Piece of regular perf board, i buy them in 6\" by 8\" Squares
5) Resistors (i use 1/2 watt 180 ohm resisters, but it depends on what the calculator tells you to use)
6) Box cutter or utility knife ( i prefer a box cutter because the blades are thinner and sharper then a utility knife blade, for a cleaner cut.)
7) Various types of wire. I use either 18 or 20 gauge solid and stranded wire. I buy the 3 pack so i have red black and green at my disposal.
Cool

Solder (thats very important...)
9) Flux (not totally necessary, and is sticky as hell and messy. BUT if you use it you will have a better joint, so its kinda worth it.)
10) Liquid Electrical tape (you may use any type of insulating sealer but i found this stuff at home depot for $5 a can and its awsome stuff.)
11) LED bulbs. Obviously this is an important thing to have. I use 5mm superflux leds because they are easy to work with but you may use whatever you can figure out in your designs.

JFD140

Now the fun part. Lets start construction the lights.

Step 1: First of all, you will need to cut your perf board to size. This can be done by using a straight edge and your box cutter or knife to score across the perf board. I use a speed square clamped to my perf board to evenly score both sides of my perf board. It is not necessary to score both sides, but it will come out much cleaner. After scoring the board a few times per side, i simply snap the board off and sand down the rough edge a bit with 220 sandpaper. Keep in mind, that i have sprayed my perf board black on one side using Krylon fusion spray paint. You not have to paint the board, but the natural color is ugly to me.

Step 2: Next we are going to simply start placing our leds into the holes in the board. The thing to keep in mind here is that if you use superflux leds, each led has 2 anodes (Positive) and 2 cathodes (negative). The LED is a square but one side has a cut corner. The post on the cut corner is your cathode. The second cathode, is the one that can be seen linked through the body of the LED to the one at the cut corner. The other two posts are your anode. The important thing to remember when you place your leds in the perf board is to keep them all facing the same direction. In this light, i have placed the cut corner of every LED to the bottom right. If you intend to follow the guide step by step, make sure the cut corner of every LED is in turned so that when you look at your board from left to right, the cut corner is the bottom right. It is hard to see in the picture, but you can see how they are aligned if you look closely.

Step 3: This is where we start getting a little more technical but not too bad. Carefully turn your board upside down and place it on a flat surface. I say carefully because when you flip it, all the leds will fall out, so hold them in place while you turn it and place it down. Once it is turned over on flat surface, use a pair of pliers to pinch the posts together. The outside posts are moved towards each other, while the inside posts are bent into an X formation like shown in the picture. BE CAREFUL not to pull too hard on the posts with your pliers. They are fragile and will snap off if you use too much force. The best way to avoid breaking them is to try and pull them together from the top of the post rather than where they meet the board. Also, make sure to keep the board tight to the LEDs so you get the all of the post and the leds sit nicely when finished.

Here is a small diagram drawn up by MarkClement to show the formation in diagram form. Please note that in this picture, the LEDs are turned different then how mine are. Also, the picture is a 3x3 diagram, you can do this as well but this guide is depicting a 3x2.

JFD140

Step 4: Continue to place your leds into the perf board and bend them over to hold them in prior to soldering. For this light, We are doing bricks of 3 across by 2 high (3x2). For this light, i have done a split color design. For the two bricks on the left i have done blue, and the two on the right side are white. MAKE SURE YOU LEAVE A SPACE BETWEEN BRICKS FOR THE RESISTOR. Make sure you don't accidentally mix up the led colors, it will look quite odd. If you pick up two different color LEDs you can usually distinguish the color without illuminating them. For example blue LEDs have a clear center while white LEDs have a yellow dot in the center.

Step 5: Things are going to get a bit trickier now. We are going to begin soldering the bulbs together. If you decided to use flux like i did, use a toothpick or other applicator to apply a tiny bit to where each joint will be.

JFD140

Step 6: Now we can begin soldering each joint. Carefully take your soldering iron and apply it to the posts at the joint to be soldered. Try to do this as quick as possible because if you hold the iron there for too long you will heat up the post and melt the LED. While holding the iron to the post, apply solder, if possible to the post and not the iron. But usually i just touch the solder to the iron and let it flow onto the posts. Once solder has been applied, remove the iron and let it cool. (nearly instantly) Do this to every single joint until they are all soldered together like shown below. Most people have never soldered before and it is really an easy thing to do. You can find various videos and guides on youtube and google that will explain it very well. So give it a search if you are having trouble. You need to have good joints in order for the light to function.

Step 7: Now that all our joints are neatly soldered, we can get going with the resistors. For this light, i have used 4 resistors, 180 ohms 1/2 watt. The resistor you need will vary depending on the color and amount of lights you use in a series. Use this calculator to figure out what you need for your light. http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz

I took my resistors and bent the \"legs\" into a U shape prior to inserting them into the board. I then proceeded to place them into the board in the spaces i left between the bricks.

JFD140

Step 8: With all four of your resistors placed in the board, bend the legs over so that the resistor will stay seated nicely to the board. One leg of the resistor is bent away for later use with our ground wire. The other leg is bent to touch the CATHODE of the last LED in the brick. (NOTE: It does not matter which way the resistor goes, there is no positive and negative so you can use either side for either the ground or connecting to the LEDs)

Step 9: Solder the leg of the resistor and the CATHODE of the last led in the series together. There will be alot of excess sticking out from the resistor. After soldering together the CATHODE and the resistor of each brick, use a pair of snips or some sort to remove the excess resistor leg. I use a flush cutting pair of wire snips to do this, but anything that will cut the wire will work. Also, be very careful when you solder the resistors, the legs of the resistor get very hot very fast, so don't let them get in contact with anything you don't want heated up. For example a joint of LEDs.

JFD140

Step 10: If you want to, you can now test each brick by applying power to the first anode (positive) in the series of leds, and applying negative to the end of the resistor that was not yet used. Do not apply negative to the side of the resistor that was soldered to the cathode. You will blow your leds. Also, be very careful not to let any of the led joints touch any type of ground. They will go poof as well.

Step 11: We will now use the other end of the resistor to hook up a common ground wire for each brick. Start at one of the end resistors, and work your way to the other end. I prefer to use solid wire for this part because it stays tight to the board when finished. You can use stranded if you choose to. The easiest way to hold the wire to the resistor leg before solderng is to wrap the resistor leg around the end of the wire like shown below. If you are working from the first resistor to the last, solder the very end resistor to your first wire. Do not solder the other side yet, it will be harder to put in the next wire if you do.

Continue to link the resistors together, wrapping the legs over the wires to hold them in place while soldering them as you go. Do not solder the last wire to the last resistor until later. This is where we will attach our ground wire later on so we want to leave it open for now.

After linking each resistor together, you may once again cut the excess leg off. Make sure not to cut the last resistor yet because we still need it for later.

JFD140

Step 12: Time to link the bricks together with positive wire. Because this is a split LED light head we want to link the two white bricks together and the two blue bricks together. If you choose to you can link all four bricks together, but then you cannot achieve split flash patterns. Connect the first anode of one brick to the first anode of the other. I use a piece of solid red wire to link the bricks together. You can solder both ends on this one, because it is actually easier to connect the wires later on by reheating the existing joint. If its very hard to hold solder, a soldering iron and 2 wires together with only two hands. So you will have to do your best to make it work.

Step 13: We are almost done! Next we are going to take a piece of stranded wire (your 10x better off using stranded wire because solid wire breaks after wiggling it a lot.) Cut the piece of wire as long as you desire, this will be your power line to the lights. Make sure you twist the wire into a solid piece after you strip it or it wont come out as neat and strong. I prefer to use two different colors, red and green so i know which wire activates each color. I used green for the blue side and red for the white side. Connect the wire to the first anode of one of the two bricks in the same place where the piece of red solid wire links the lights together. It is easier to \"tin\" the tip of the stranded wire so it more readily joints into the solder joint when you reheat it. Do this by dipping the tip into some flux and touching it to the iron. Solder will readily flow from the iron onto the tip, do not hold it too long it will melt the rubber insulation of the wire.

This it what it looks like after being tinned

Now you are ready to also connect the negative(ground) wire. Do the same thing as we did for the positive wires. Cut a piece to the desired length ( i prefer to leave all my wires pretty long till the end, like a foot or more, i cut them later) Place the end of the wire to the last resistor. Remember the one we left unsoldered? So place it in with the resistor and solid wire, fold the leg of the resistor over. Solder the joint and again remove excess resistor leg. In the picture below, you can see where the positive wire joints each pair of bricks as well as where the ground wire joints the last resistor.

JFD140

Step 14: Congratulations, you have made it this far and the hard part is over. Now you may hook up your wires if you choose to and make sure everything is connected properly. We have not yet coated the joints so they are still exposed. Make sure you don't touch them to a ground or the LEDs will blow. Only put power through the 2 positive wires and 1 ground wire.

I prefer to test each side individually and then as a whole. I leave the light running for about an hour to make sure there is no bad joints or LEDs in the series.

Step 15: LAST STEP!!! Take out your liquid electrical tape or silicone or whatever you plan to use to insulate the back of the board. Coat EVERY single piece of exposed wire or joints. If you are using liquid electrical tape, i prefer to just coat the entire back about 3-4 coats. Apply the first coat, let it try for about 5-10 minutes. Then a second, third and possibly fourth until every piece of metal is covered.

Here is once again the finished product

NOW and only now are you finished with your light. Still be cautious not to let the back touch any type of ground even though it is insulated.

Give yourself a pat on the back for making it through. As far as a housing goes, you can use damn near anything that the light will fit in. I used 1\" aluminum channel for this light because it is lightweight and strong, but be careful because it is a highly conductive ground. I will make add to the guide to show how to make the housing if anyone wants, but if you made it this far i damn well hope you can figure out how to mount it into something.

Once you get the hang of it feel free to go crazy and make larger lights. Here is the lightbar I made inspired by MarkClements.

The video does it no justice, its a digital camera video and the windshield is covered in rain.

planecrazy03

nice. that looks flippin good. good pics for information and better reference. thanx ! can you post how to make the housings?

mooseseven

wow, this is really great, what did you use as a flasher?

JFD140

il see what i can do tomorrow.

cbpdogboy

[quote:c153fee763=\"planecrazy03\"]nice. that admin edit looks good. good pics for information and better reference. thanx ! can you post how to make the housings?

Posted: Wed 19-Mar-2008 20:04 Post subject:

where can one obtain the perf board? or is called other things?

Posted: Wed 19-Mar-2008 21:11 Post subject:

All the electrical stuff, soldering iron, wire, flux, perf board. All at radioshack. Its $4.50 for a 6\" x 8\" sheet at my radioshack. Just go to radioshack and ask for perf board and you want the non copper plated kind. Just regular plastic perf board, its a brown color when its unpainted.

Posted: Wed 19-Mar-2008 21:59 Post subject:

Awesome info!!! Now if only I could figure out how to program my own flash patterns, like ones from a current name brand product, that has been discontinued!!

Posted: Wed 19-Mar-2008 22:01 Post subject:

Thanks for the wonderful info! gonna try this soon. btw 8 ) LOL

Posted: Wed 19-Mar-2008 22:08 Post subject:

As if I needed more LEDs in my house. Oh well, I'm sure I'll manage.

Posted: Thu 20-Mar-2008 04:08 Post subject:

THANKS!!!!! You just inspired me to blow my entire paycheck at RadioShack. Also for others, the Perf board is the same as the IC Board, if you guys know it by that http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102862&cp=&sr=1&origkw=board&kw=board&parentPage=search. I plan on going and maybe making something of my own now. Also do you know what type of LEDs would be good for steady burn? I know ShoMe LED By-the-Inchs would get too hot and blow if they were not used with a flasher. One thing I found with using the calculator is that you may want to enter only what will be flashing in one brick/block of lights at one time. I entered my array with 72 LEDs thinking three 24 LED sections. I was thinking it may want me to have larger resistors thinking 72 LED will be flashing at once, then I entered only 24, as only 24 will be on at a time. It gave me the same resistor, 1/4w, but something to think about if you want to have very large light arrays, it may say a large resistor is needed when only a few LED will be on at a time, but I do not know what can happen, if it would burn out heads or something. Just a thought. Dumb question, I thought resistors were supposed to go between the power source and the LEDs. Not on the negative side. I always thought they were to reduce or convert the power to the proper operating level of the object. If they are placed on the negative side, what exactly are they doing? Like I said dumb question. Admin can this get a Sticky?????

Posted: Thu 20-Mar-2008 04:30 Post subject:

I just found this site with some info about LEDs and brightness and everything. http://www.gizmology.net/LEDs.htm Also how can you make something negative switched? Last edited by PTR-Jason on Thu 20-Mar-2008 04:38; edited 1 time in total

Posted: Thu 20-Mar-2008 04:30 Post subject:

This hould be a sticky

Posted: Thu 20-Mar-2008 06:43 Post subject:

i think to do it negative you could probably change the direction on the leds and then run one common positive and setup the led's for a negative switching for an arrowstick setup or flasher.

Posted: Thu 20-Mar-2008 07:37 Post subject:

To make it negative switched, you would do everything just like the directions say (don't reverse the LEDs), with a common positive wire across all your LED arrays, instead of a common ground wire. You would then ground your groups of LEDs individually (or in groups that you want to flash together). As for the resistor question, it can go on either side (+ or -) of the circuit and will do the same thing. It is basically just absorbing the extra power that the LED array does not use (well, not really - it's a little more complicated than that). Chris

Posted: Thu 20-Mar-2008 07:39 Post subject:

One thing I am still wondering about is how to wire up the flasher. Definitly post the info on how to make housings too! Great post and thanks for the info!

Posted: Thu 20-Mar-2008 07:43 Post subject:

Turned out great!

Posted: Thu 20-Mar-2008 08:14 Post subject:

wiring the flasher is easy. You need to plan ahead though for making the light when you choose your flasher. 90% of flashers are positive switched which means you hook the positive wire to them and have a common ground with the lights. Some flashers like SHO-me traffic flashers are negatively switched so you need a common positive and split grounds. All you do is get your flasher, hook the positives up to it, and then ground out the negative somewhere and your done. Most come with a simple wiring diagram. For those wondering, the aluminum channel was purchased at home depot for $11 for 8 feet of it. Also, for flashers there is a wide range of choices. You dont require anything fancy but you can go for more if you desire. Currently i have this flasher http://www.rimindustries.com/product-p/11.1005.htm But i am awaiting a whelen ULF44 that is currently backordered. When you decide on a flasher you should take into consideration the setup of lights. For a split color light like in the guide, you really only need a 2 channel flasher. 2 channels means that it can hook up to two lights that you want to flash in sync. This means i can connect one color to one channel and the other to the second channel. Without a 2 channel or more flasher you cannot have alternating patterns. I chose to get a ULF44 from whelen because it is a 4 channel flasher. My lightbar is wired to work on 4 channels. Currently i have it running on two so its not as good as it will be. And dont worry, just because its a two channel flasher does not mean you cant hook up 10 lights to it. Just make sure that you don't overload it and you are fine with as many as you can fit on the wire. Rimindustries has a decent selection of low priced able 2 flashers and they work great. The videos at the end of the guide with my lightbar are using an able 2 flasher. http://www.rimindustries.com/category-s/91.htm

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