LEDs for Your Sea Perch

Have you ever lost your Sea Perch in murky waters? Well, LEDs are a great way to help you locate and navigate your Sea Perch in such conditions and at night. This extension adds three LEDs (red, green, and white) and another toggle switch to your control box.

Materials
1 SPST toggle switch
3 LED lights - 1 green, 1 red, and 1 white
25" of black wire (or 5 pieces of 5")
25" of red wire (or 5 pieces of 5")
1 1K � resistor (brown-black-red-gold)
Butyl rubber tape (a.k.a. monkey dung)
1 zip tie

Tools
Soldering iron and solder
Vice or clamp
Wire cutter
Wire stripper
Red marker
Small screwdriver
1/4" drill bit and drill

Step 1 Part I: Attaching the LED lights to your Sea Perch (Steps 1 - 4)

1. Cut the red and black wires into five equal length pieces each (5 black and 5 red). Each piece should be about 5" long. Set apart one pair (red and black) of wires for use later.

(2. Strip about 1/4" of insulation from each end of each piece. Twist the inner wires (strands) on each end to prevent fraying and breaking.

(3. On each of the LEDs, find the positive leg and label it with red marker. Typically, it is marked by a longer leg. Otherwise, you can use a 2 AA batteries (3V) to test for the polarity of the LED. Do not connect the LED to the 12V battery used to power your Sea Perch or the LED bulbs will burn out.(

4. Solder one piece of red wire to the positive leg of each LED, as shown in diagram 1. You should solder as close to the bulb as possible (without touching or burning the bulb). Similarly attach a piece of black wire to the negative leg of each LED. Cut off the lower portion of the LED legs that are unnecessary. Do this for all three of the LED lights.

Comments

[sarahfish]

 rock on!  I run the SP program at MIT (perhaps we've met...), I'd love to link to this from the site, seaperch.mit.edu, would that be cool with you?  Also, we have a SP group on instructables (search "sea perch" and select "groups" on the pull-down)  could we link it there as well to help SP users find it?

[hsubox]

yeah, of course you may!
haha, i do believe we've met when i was interning last summer.
let me know if there's anything else I can do to help out...

[MITSeaPerch]

I second that.

[LuminousObject]

Awesome. I'm thinking of making one of these, and I was wondering how much yours cost?

[hsubox]

I was provided the materials from the program I worked with. However, the cost for materials is approx $90, according to http://seaperch.mit.edu/build.php
If you have some of the materials and the tools lying around, you will be able to save lots of money. Have fun!

[zoltzerino]

What is a 'Sea Perch' and what is its use?

[hsubox]

"The Sea Perch is a simple, remotely operated underwater vehicle, or ROV, made from PVC pipe and other inexpensive, easily available materials." from <a href="http://seaperch.mit.edu/">http://seaperch.mit.edu/</a><br />

[Blackice504]

from what i seen its a little boat and its use is for FUN.