Other places to buy led kits for rc headlights fogs and tail lights for cheap

[M3EVOlution]

I have an LED headlight and taillight kit that I made. It lights up when I hit the brakes but I think I'lll just buy a premade set because mine isn't bright like the ones from rcneon. Any places that sell them cheaper? I like mine to be like Pitstops one on his eclipse btw.

Basically my set up is 1 9V battery, 2 yellow leds for the front that are each 2 volts and 20mA, and 2 red LEDs that are 28 mA and 2 volts each. It's not bright.

[heavy_metal]

oznium.com

[streetracer]

There was a guy on here named RCLEDz that made and sold the best kits i have ever seen or owned.

[bufferoo]

First thing I would ask is what mcd rating your LED's are. I use 8000mcd at the least for headlights and I even have 12000mcd reds for taillights. I find that anything thats rated at least 4000mcd for blue, green, pink, or purple are fine.

If you don't know what yours are rated at I would try to swap them out (just the leds...leave everything else as is) with ones where you know the rating. Compare the brightness. Most of the LED's that you'll find nowadays are 3V - 3.5V so if you have one on a 9V battery you will need a 180 - 200 ohm resistor to drive them at 30ma. I even push my taillights to 45ma for the brake lights. They're VERY bright. The way I figure it...the brakes are not on for that long..... :D

Bufferoo

[orbitron]

I was thinking abut making my own LED light set. The only problem is i don't know how to wire it. I was thinking I could probably just run them in series off of a 9v. Or maybe I could actually run them off of the battery by wiring them parallel with the ESC. is there anyone who has built one that has a schematic?

[Viper17]

www.rcneon.com has some led stuff but it might be a little pricy take a look

[bufferoo]

Well here you can sort of see what I did. Can't really get a better picture than that right now. You can see the whole harness, the brake lights, and then the tail lights. The little black box just above the battery and a bit to the right is the micro switch for the brakes. I'll see if I can dig up my schematic. I "should" still have the file somewhere.

Keep in mind the brightness of these LED's is higher than it appears. The lights in the room make them seem a bit dim and the battery is getting low. It's only putting out 7.8v right now. Time for a change. The headlights are simply blinding on a fresh battery.

Bufferoo

[bufferoo]

I couldn't find the schematic so I drew up a quick one in PAINT. It should be pretty clear. The red blocks are the resistors. You'll have to play with their values to get the current you need. The green part is the microswitch. It shorts out one resistor to increase the current draw on the taillights. The blue blocks show where the LED's go. I hope this helps. It's easier than it seems.

Bufferoo

[orbitron]

cool. You'd be my best friend if you could find me the schematic...

[orbitron]

oops. I see you already did.

[bufferoo]

I know that this can all be a bit confusing at first so please feel free to let me know if you need any help. I've been doing this sort of thing for 15 years now so I take it a bit for granted that some people might be new to it. ;)

Bufferoo

[orbitron]

No it's not bad. I understand generally. The only thing I don't get is the connection to the rx? Is that how the microswitch operates?

Also do you remember how much resistance the resistors had?

[bufferoo]

I'm pretty sure I used 1/2 watt 100 ohm resistors. I have 2 LED's in series on each resistor. For the brake lights I added a 270 ohm resistor in series with the 100 and the microswitch is in parallel with the 270. When it gets switched it shorts out the 270 and that ups the current to the LED's. The microswitch is activated with the brake lever (it's on a nitro) and held in place with double sided tape. Works quite well. I don't have it connected to the rx. I use a 9v battery but it certainly can be wired to the rx pack or even a 6 cell pack. You just need to modify the circuit a bit. If you go off of 6v you must do one LED per resistor as they run at 3v - 3.5v each. Off of a 7.2v pack you can use the circuit as is but the resistor values will have to be changed to account for the drop in voltage. Somewhere around a 40 ohm resistor would be better in that case.

Bufferoo

[orbitron]

nice. I understand the switch now. I was just thinking there has to be some way to use the current from the rx to trigger the voltage increase. I use electric so buying an ESC just for brake lights is kind of a waste of $$... I'm sure there is a way that I could use a diode or something to see which way the current is flowing in the rx line then use that as a switching device.