diy cheap asian style car underbody lights

Step 2 Constructing your led sticks

i used wood here for the base to hold the leds up, since i have tons of long and thin piece of jarrah after the renovation of my house. use pvc or whatever if its more applicable.

the configuration i set the leds up are in series and parallel.

NOTE that red leds are driven by ~2volts dc. while blue, white, even some green LEDS require ~3.3 volts dc.

with 12.6-14.6v supplied from the car, u can connect 6 leds through series. 2*6 is 12v, so a resistor is required to prevent the leds blowing up. u will find a 30ohm nicely fits into the equation. however, im going for 27ohms, making the leds gong about 2.1v when supplied 14.6v

using a packaging foam, i have created my own special apparatus to solder the leds equally distance and spaced apart. i have chosen to space the leds 5cm for the side lights and 4cm for the front and back lights. pretty sure theres better ways of doing this. but didnt think that much. remember to dig a little hole so the solder iron or led legs wont touch the foam.

this process is probably the longest for the whole project. took me few hours including distractions, breaks, etc.

Comments

[gwolff]

how do you make strips with more than 6 leds? 2v led * 6 is your 12v battery.. Are you just wiring each set of six in parallel with the other set of six?