Modding with leds

mrjack

mrjack

VIP Member
I'm gonna put some leds etc. in my case soon and was going to draw power from the PSU, either from the +12V rail or the +5V. How many leds can run on a single molex connector, what resistors, chips and electric wires do I need. And is there a way to program/make them light up in a certain way e.g. wave. I know I can use a trimpot to adjust the speed of the wave if I had it set like that. Any sites you know that have about this kind of stuff?
 
For starters i would just get some L.E.D.'s and place them around in your case. I wouldnt start off trying to get them to move in waves or to the music.

I would go to radio shack or something, pick up some 12V or 5V L.E.D.'s, and connect them to the molex. Im sure they dont use much power so you can probably have several on one connector, and if you get a LED that is rated for either 12V or 5V, then you wouldnt need a resistor.
 
I want to use as little power and have a lot of LEDs, so the only solution is getting a pcboard, necessary resistor(s), leds and electric wire. I have a "fanbox" I'm gonna do, which would have 4 leds pointed towards the 120mm fan. I could post the animation I'm doing, that shows the fanbox as a 3D model. The camera just goes around the fanbox and flies through the hole where the fan would be. All done in HDR by the way.
 
mrjack said:
I want to use as little power and have a lot of LEDs, so the only solution is getting a pcboard, necessary resistor(s), leds and electric wire. I have a "fanbox" I'm gonna do, which would have 4 leds pointed towards the 120mm fan. I could post the animation I'm doing, that shows the fanbox as a 3D model. The camera just goes around the fanbox and flies through the hole where the fan would be. All done in HDR by the way.
Click to expand...
well thats why LEDs are used in computers they use very little power.
 
You want something like this but on a much MUCH smaller scale, this is what the PRO xmas light people use to control their awesome displays......

http://www.lightorama.com/index.html

LIGHT-O-RAMA, they might doa smaller range, but its at least somewhere to start, maybe search from there.....


dragon2309


*EDIT* - if you read about their products, it can all be controlled from a central PC, so you could effectively control the lights from your own PC in a console kind of thing, that would be good!!!

*EDIT AGAIN* - You could buy this http://store.lightorama.com/mc-p.html which is a MC-P control unit along with this http://store.lightorama.com/mc-tb08.html which is a modular add on that supports 8 channels of lights to make cool effects, of course if you buy the software (also on that site) and an SERIAL connector (on the site aswell) then your technically sorted....... That modular add-on supports up to 8 amps so your not going to exceed that are you whcih is good......

dragon2309
 
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Well, I can either use +12V/+5V off the PSU, 9-20V transformers or the old PSU that I have a fan connected to. The cable going to the fan says "115V AC-Fan". And can I basically do it like this

led---resistor--"+"
|
led
|
led
|
led
|
led------------"-"
 
Wouldnt each LED then decrease in brightness ina series circuit, wouldnt a parallel setup be better, if it is then each LED would need their own resistor aswell.

This would be my solution to what you are trying to do. Obviously this is basic and doesnt implement any effects, for this you would need some kind of control unti, see my post before for more details.....

circuitschematic4oa.jpg


--------------------------------------------------------------------------

This could then be expanded to something like:

circuitschematic4jt.jpg
 
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On a (Finnish) site they had about the Kirchhoff law #1.
http://metku.net/mods/sahkooppi/kirc1.gif
So if I used a +5V rail that was 60mA and connected 3 leds (20mA) in parallel I wouldn't need any resistors since they would be able to use every mA? But it's a bit different if I use a 22V 550mA transformer to power the leds.

EDIT:

How would I go about soldering multiple, say 10 LEDs. Just solder them after each other on the wire or same point?
 
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Errrmmmmm......... Firstly, you wouldnt just be limited to only 3, you could have just 2 LED's in that diagram on that site and they would each consume 30mA each. Thats the whole point of a parallel circuit.

And if you were to solder them one after the other, it would be a series circuit and the LED's would decrease in brightness as you got further around the circuit.

So if I used a +5V rail that was 60mA
Click to expand...
And this bit, whos saying that the +5v rail has 60mA on it, if it does then its pretty poor..... It all depends on what the LED's are all rated at, there is no fixed number for LED's you have to go buy some and check them out etc......
 
Well, I found some red LEDs that cost about 12 cents (€) each and are rated 1.7-2.6V 30mA each. I'll be probably using a 22V about 550mA transformer. According to a "resistor calculator" I used on a modding site, I would need a 56Ohm 12W resistor to be safe for a 12 LED set. This was the safe pick but I thought about just using a 56Ohm 10W since that's the closest I could find and the accurate resistor wattage was 7.2. So would this be a good way to set everything up?
http://img191.imageshack.us/my.php?image=leds6zt.jpg
 
Kinda outta my league now, and i dont want to say something that could end up ruining everything, so i'll let someone else fend for this question..... There msut be someone better at physics than me.
 
Gonna go to the shop some day, probably tomorrow or on friday after school. Good thing the bus goes through town. I'll ask the guys at the electronics shop about this, and then I'll probably buy the stuff so that I can mod over the weekend atleast.

EDIT:

Noticed that the LED type I'm gonna get wasn't 30mA, it's 15mA. Which means I can have 24 LEDs instead with the same resistor.
 
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