Remote controlled lights

[Cloak]

I was looking around for some easy instructions to turn my lights on and off from the remote, but my search didn't turn up any good pictures. So why not do one up! (Edit: I'm not responsible if you fry your electronics or kill kittens while following my instructions.)

First off, I took apart a servo (traxxas in this case) and pulled all the gears out. I also unsoldered the motor on it. Unfortunately no pictures of that, but it is pretty simple. Put some solder on your iron and apply it to each side of the bottom of the circuit board. The motor will drop right out.

Next up, solder some new wires on both sides:

The nice thing about doing this is you get yourself a nice case to store all the electronics in:

Once it is put together, plug it all back in to your receiver pack. In this case I'm not using a separate battery pack. Also make sure to get the pot switch tuned so the lights are off by default.

I had this 2 channel radio handy, so I plugged it into the steering for this test. You could plug it into a 3rd channel on a traxxas radio or whatever other radio you have. As long as you set the trim correctly, it will turn on when you turn the signal on. Keep in mind, there are 3 positions on that switch, so one direction will make it turn on, the other will send the current the wrong way around.

Not much more to be said, this mod really is pretty easy. (BTW, yes I know that this light should have a resistor on it. For this test I wasn't going to worry about it.)

 

[Mechanicalbob]

That is a great IDEA. It also gives me a few things to think about too. Like getting a few blinking LED's, being that the power is reversed you could have blinking turn signal's. For nitro you could get brake lights too. Hmmm there are a lot of options for this. Thanks for the great idea. You can also get rid of the POT altogether by putting in some 2.2k resistors.

Steve

 

[Cloak]

You can also get rid of the POT altogether by putting in some 2.2k resistors.

You would just join 2 of the 3 points together, right?

 

[Mechanicalbob]

You would just join 2 of the 3 points together, right?

Sorta I guess. What you would do is take one resistor solder it to on eof the outside POT leads do the same for the other, then join them together with the center POT lead. That way it will think that it is always at center. I will post up a picture later.

Steve

 

[BrockGrimes]

This is an excellent post, simple and if you have the channels you could really get crazy with it.
For my TLT scaler I simpley used a micro servo on the 3rd ch of a TQ3 to move a switch on and off. I could eliminate the servoand the switch and just use the circuit board. A stock TQ3 has the 3rd ch which is just on or off. Should work great, I'll post up if I get it build.

"thumbsup"

 

[emaxxjeremy]

great idea, but i wonder how many lights you could run before the bec gets overloaded, or how much it would drain the rx pack. with a simple headlight setup it is perfect, but u get into more complex lighting, and it may become an issue

 

[Cloak]

That's a simple matter of just adding a battery pack inline. If memory serves, you run the black directly to the battery and the red to both battery and the receiver. White goes straight to receiver.

I'll have to double check that. I don't remember off the top of my head if that's the right configuration.