Lighting System Question
 

Im looking for a simple lighting system to light 3 pair of white and one pair of red lights for my scaler. I dont need brake lights or turn signals, and it doesnt need to work from the radio.

My question is what would you guys recommend for an inexpensive system to do this or an easy way to make my own.

Thanks

I canabalize 9 led flashlights for my lighting needs. Usually find them in the sale bins at home depot 2 for $5 or so. Takes some time to wire them up, but fairly bright, and fairly cheap.

On ebay you can find very low cost leds. Now for the controller it is all another issue.

Go to crawl canada and look up leds there. They have a member that build awesome stuff for a resonable price. Axial makes an easy plug and play setup as well.

Greg, get on E-bay. That's where I got mine. There's a company called RClighthouse or some shit. They have great Deals. I think I got all my light for 9.00 dollars shipped."thumbsup"

I bought resistors and LED's from radioshack and just run them off a 9v that's velcro-ed to the body. I used a switch I took off a ESC to turn them on and off.

The math behind LED's is really simple really, they have an amperage rating and you just need to select the right resistors to hit it.

Ohms law: Volts = Ohms * Amps
i.e. 9V (battery) = Ohms * .030A (30mA rating on the LED)

so 9/.03 = 300 which means you need a 300 Ohm resistor. You can wire LED's in series as long as the amperage rating is being met

Also, remember the "D" part of the LED is a diode, so they will only work when connected one way.

I use Tamiya's light box controller.It makes life simpler and you can hook up to sixteen led's on it with their led lights,plus they come in all different colors

Sweet, thanks Joe and Sheldon. I was thinking about trying to build my own. I'd like to take a look at both of your setup here soon.

My suggestion is to get them made by Bill of Bills custom RC lighting. Very inexpensive , very fast shipping, high quality units. The last set I bought I paid about $30 shipped, got them in two days, after which I priced out all the supplies.... $28! Can't beat that with a ten foot pole my friend!

I sell a few different kits for the short course trucks and have been using them on crawlers as well.

www.RAMTech-RC.com

The mian problem is I have run out of the 6 LED system you are looking for, but the 4 LED are still in stock. I will ahve more stock in 2 weeks, including a 2 red system as well.

Like others mentioned, Radio shack. I think I have less then $12 into my light kit for my Honcho. Granted it doesnt have functional brake lights and turn signals but oh well.......


As far as wiring and calculating ohm rating this should help.
http://metku.net/index.html?sect=vie...calc/index_eng

Use "20" for the milliamp rating.

And, the higher the MCD rating, the brighter the led will be.

I have 4 strands of 2 leds wired in series and 1 led all ran parallel off a 9 volt battery. I let it run until the battery went dead and it lasted a good 2+ days straight





Good Luck. "thumbsup"

I have some tail lights you can have, I got a bunch of them, there not LEDs though, I like them better cause they are really small. You have to get some LEDs for headlights and then Joe or I can show you how to wire them to a 9volt, I can also show you how I turn them on and off w/ my radio."thumbsup"

Thanks for all the good info. I do think I will build my own and just run it off of a 9 volt. Just to keep it simple. I don't think I have the room on my radio to run the lights. I only have a 3 channel my winch is running on the 3rd.

On the subject of lights...does anyone make a headlight kit with bezels and lenses?

There is a lot of info on LEDs, but not much on headlight "assemblies".

Do you just use something like a 3Racing spot light and glue it in?
http://www.rcmart.com/catalog/rc-lig...t-p-27647.html

Anyone used the Axial TR light system or the Losi Nightcrawler light system and patched that into a honcho?

lately I've been using the 3racing unit, but for most of all my previous lighting projects I have wires up LED's in pairs 3v led's and ran them off of a CC bec at 6v. never had an issue with burning up lights or having to change batteries, I run a BEC on all my scalers so to tap into it for the LED system is pretty simple and no extra parts"thumbsup"

I just picked up a 10 led set from RC4WD and it was 25 shipped. Not too bad, just plugs into the reciever, nothing fancy just light.

So if I were to make a lighting system, would it be better to run everything in series or should I run the sets in parallel?

Most likely parallel.

If you wire them in series, you are increasing the amount of voltage they need to draw. If they are 6v led's, 2 would need 12v wired in series.

Parallel will keep the draw @6v.(whatever they are rated at)

hope that helps