Hello people!

In this instructable I will show you how to light up you skateboard using LEDs. In my example i put the LEDs upward, but you can put them downward for a neon like effect. I had this idea whne my friend pimped hi tricycle and had the idea to put neon on it. This gives a really cool effect on your pants and you can easily be seen from 100m away! Enjoy your new board that now is different and road safe!

English isn't my first language, so if you see mistakes/grammar problems don't blame me. I also like to show things visually instead of describing them; this is the reason for the amount of pictures used.

Step 1: Equipment

Hardware:
- Drill & drill bit the size of a LED
- Soldering Iron & soldering iron
- Glue gun (optional)
- Wire cutters

Software (parts)
- LEDs (I used 6)
- Button
- 9V battery
- 9V battery clip
- Resistors*
- Wire
- Electrical tape
- Duct tape (optional, but recommended)

Skills:
Need to know how to solder
Need to know how to drill

*I used 6 LESs, but you can use more. Check how much resistance you need before you solder them.

Step 2: Preparing the Board

In this step we will drill the holes. Get a drill bit that is a bit bigger then the LED your using.

Image 2&3:
Drilling the holes

Image 4:
Insert a LED in the hole

Image 5:
Poke a piece of electrical tape over the led

Image 6:
Bend the LEDs leads and mark of the positive and negative leads (positive is the longer one)

Step 3: Electronics

First of all, I'm sorry for the bad picture of the circuit board.

The first image is how I did my circuit board.
The power supply is 9 volts.
The blue spots are my resistors, 100 Ohms each*
The red spots are LEDs. The color of my LEDs are blue so the voltage drop was 3.0 - 3.5 Volts per LED. When making your own LED array use the chart underneath to calculate the voltage drop**.

Red 1.8 - 2.1V
Orange 2.2V
Yellow 2.4V
Green 2.6V
Blue 3.0 - 3.5V
White 3.0 - 3.5V

*Use the amount of Ohm's appropriate to your circuit
**Approximate voltage

Step 4: Covering Up

I used duct tape to cover up the electronics.

Step 5: Done!

Your done!

This took me about 1 hour.

Problems you might run into:

Only a few of the LEDs working!
- Recheck your circuit... Have you connected a + to a -?
- You LED might be broken =S

It stopped working after I did a grind on my board!
- You ripped apart your wires when you did your grind.... dumb dumb...

Ideas:
Put the electronic parts on top of the board and cover with grip-tape! This way you can grind! =D

Hope you enjoyed this and I hope you have fun building this!

P.S. The effect on my pants (image 2&3 is brighter in real life)