Baja light pods - 6V

[Tamiyacowboy]

Would a capacitor be enough for the small voltage were using here tho.

For the resister it would be an ache soldering in a res in front of each led could one or two resisters be used instead like put one as the link from the out pairs to the rails with heatshrink on them just as this is shown with wire. Or just put one on the pos battery wire before it exits the pod.

I've made two now and feel comfortable making the circuit now so I will go to refining now. These are working pretty well tho but I haven't had them on for hours yet.

The first clump I did had two dud leds in the centre I think I didn't link them well enough the 2nd clump is all on tho and 10x neater.

I have a bread board/jig for making the circuits it definitely helps but you could do it as here and use the pod face plate then push them out.

I'll find my volt metre tomorrow and see what that says and go from there.

I've seen those 3d led cubes they are crazy cool there's some huge ones on youtube running aurdrino making like firework displays. Aurdrino is cool I want to get into that at some point.

 

 

regulator has three legs. 

 

i connect battery pos to the input leg

i connect battery ground to the ground leg on regulator. 

 

now i have a battery fitted with the regulator, it take the 9v and lets say jumps it down to 5v.

now i make my light loom, i want to power it at 5v but be able to use 9v battery. i take my pos lead

from light loom and connect this to the third leg on the resistor. i solder my neg lead from leds to the neg lead 

on the regulator ground pin. 

 

now my light loom is complete. 1 regulator giving 5v only from a 9v battery, lets say my battery dies

that square PP3 9v battery dont last to long. so i can plug in a 2s lipo. i know its just under 9v and my 

regulator is safe with an input voltage of 30v max. the one problem would be a lipo alarm but cheap to come by and most of us guys have one.

 

capacitors are like a battery, they get charged up with electrons and when bridged release them in one big dump,

lets take an esc, it has two capacitors fitted to the pos-neg terminals on the esc input side for battery.

the voltage flows from the battery, into both capacitors charging them up, 

we are driving slow so no big drop in voltage, but if we hammer hard on the throttle ,

we want all that power. problem is the bec onboard needs power to and the MC ( micro controller),

this is where those capacitors help all that juice is sucked from the esc but those capacitors also hold say 30v each

and they release it in a few nano seconds, enough voltage to overcome the voltage drop.

your truck fires of the starting line full beans.

 

esc's that dont have a capacitor you could find just goes into failsafe, the MC sees a huge voltage drop and cuts the juice to motor,

its saving its own back so it can still run, aka the brain needs to stay alive and this autoshutdown is its safety feature to insure

it keeps control. you guys then add a capactitor module, this extra store of energy negates the voltage droop and the autoshutdown and

you get full bean from the throttle-esc-battery-motor.

 

now lets add a huge 30v capacitor to the lights. we gonna fit this to the pos and ground pins on the regulator.

my battery charges it up, and my lights work. i only need 5v to run them keep this in mind. 

NOW what will happen is i REMOVE battery ?

the led lights will stay on. the charge from the capacitor is regulated to 5v out via the regulator. and we have 30v

stored. 6x more than we require. so the capacitors slowy discharge and the leds keep alight without a battery.

when the capacitor is empty the lights go out. if we connect a battery, the battery feeds the lights and starts to recharge the capacitor back up.

 

Edit: here is a video showing how we use regulators. notice capacitor/s used  are for filtering they help keep the voltage stable and not vary ( variation is very minor like .5v but can become critical so we filter cap to keep the regulation at the respected voltage needed and spec'd) 

 

Edited September 1, 2014 by Tamiyacowboy

[myv8growler]

Just wired up a set of 5v, 5mm leds into the headlight pods of my son's baja.

Wired them in parallel with a resistor in series using maplins handy resistor calculator.

all working great.

Getting the leds in the pods was interesting.

Will take some pics later.

Got a midnight pumpkin in the post that will get some electrics when it arrives too.

[myv8growler]

Not the best quality pics