Ever seen the LED bars found at clubs or raves etc. ?

well we'll show you how to make a bar similar to those in an easy step by step instructable. All you need is a little bit of thinking and you can make this in any way you want. Ultimately this light bar is only a model and you can modify it in several different ways and even make it extremely extravagant. Like all of our instructables and videos, have fun and make it even better than us. We'll give you the ideas, ya'll make them better!

Good Luck, With that said, lets begin this awesome project! if you want a step by step instructional video watch the video bellow, if not, go on to the first step.

Enjoy

Step 1: Getting the Supplies

You will need a couple of supplies for this project, most of which you can find on E-bay (if you need a cheap price) or your local hardware store or even laying around your house.

You will need a number of LED"s depending on how big, or how extravagant you want your light to be you will need more LED's you will use etc.

For our light we used,

28 -LED's with 4 different colors.
    - White =10
    - Blue = 3
    - Green = 3
    - Red = 4

28 -120 Ohm Resistors

54 - 1" x 1" square pieces of glass
   - we found these in a pack of 24 at Hobby Lobby for $3.99

You also need several pieces of speaker wire and jumper cables.

A 48" piece of wood, if you want the bar to be larger you would go out and buy a larger piece of wood.

For your tools you will need:

Dremmel Drill
1/16" Drill Bit
Soldering Gun
Metallic Paint

Surround Sound or speaker System :)

Step 2: Getting the Board Ready

The first you need to do is find the location of your LED's this location can be calculated by measuring the length of your Board and then dividing the length of your board by the number of LED's. Once you do this you will get a number. This number will be the location where your LED's will be located.

You start by making a line down the middle of your board, your LED's will be located on that line and at the distance that you calculated above.

For example, our bar is 48" long and we have 28 LED's in our project. we know that we have to place one LED every 1.71 inches apart.

Your board might be different depending on the length and the number of LED's you have in hand.

Step 3: Drilling the LED Spots in the Bar

Using your 1/16" drill bit and your Dremel Drill you need to make 2 small holes in the location of the board where your LED's will be located about 3 millimeters apart from each other.

Your LED's prongs will fit in the small holes and keep everything in place, make sure that your LED fits snugly inside the holes.

Step 4: Placing the LED's in the Bar

Next thing is to paint the LED bar in a metallic reflective color. This will make the LED's appear more brilliant than they really are once you paint the bar in a metallic color.

Place all the LED's on your bar in their corresponding groups.

Our LED has 5 white LED's on the first and last row, followed by 3 Green LED's and then 3 Blue LEDs then lastly 4 Red LEd's on the center similar to the drawing bellow.

WWWWW GGG BBB RRRR BBB GGG WWWWW

Step 5: Connecting the LED's Together

once you have placed the LED's in the bar you need to begin to bend the Large Prong of your LED downwards. you will connect every Large prong of your LED together using Jumper Cables.

The short end of the LED will all be connected together with a 120 Ohm Resistor in between each of the LED's

You need to place the LED's in groups, the White LED's will all be connected, the Green LED's will all be connected, the Blue LED's will be together and lastly the Red ones will all be together.

Each one of your speakers will control a different group of LED's.

For Example we have our Sub-woofer controlling our White LED's

Our Center Speaker controlling the Red LED's

Left and Right speakers controlling the Green and Blue LED's

Step 6: Getting Your Speakers Ready

If you want to make this a permanent fix to your room you can solder your speakers and your bar together, if not you can use a set of alligator clamps to make it a temporary fix.

Opening the speaker system you can solder your positive and your negative connections of the speaker and connecting them to the positive and negative connections on your group of LED's

for example, our Sub-Woofer is controlling the White LED's so we connected the Subwoofer speaker wires to the White Group of LED's

Step 7: Finish Up the Bar

Once you have finished the connection you can begin to hot glue your mirrors in a triangular setup in between all of your LED's this will give it the appearance of a multiple line of LED's rather than just a single line.

Step 8: Testing Out the Bar

And that's it, you have finished the LED lights have fun with it and enjoy the bar in your new room. This is how the bar should look.

This is another preview of our bar in action with different songs and music sounds.

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55 Comments

jleonard9

10 years ago on Introduction

Wow, this seems like the perfect project for me, but looking over it, I thought up some questions. If I hook these directly up to the speaker, It has to be getting it's power from it then. So I was just curious if the amount of power to flash say... 10 LED's from one speaker would be noticeable, especially if I have matching left and right speakers, and I only hooked up the LED's to the right one, would the sound be noticeably dimmer? Also, you hooked it directly up to the speaker, I imagine that is what allows you to get distinguished flashes, but if I hooked it up to my receiver directly, would I still get flashing LED's, or would that burn them out? Really interested in this, thanks for the tutorial!

snipesome

10 years ago on Introduction

Can you please link me two the mirrors I can't find them on hobby lobby

chetancc

10 years ago on Introduction

Where is the circuit diagram?

brobertsmhs2009

10 years ago on Introduction

Hey, I have Klipsch Pro Media 2.1 Speakers I was wondering if you could recommend how to connect the led's to my speakers. They do have the left in right speaker inputs as the spring inputs, but I am unsure as to how to connect the "white leds" to the subwoofer.

Thanks,
Bryan

gm93d

10 years ago on Introduction

This is great but can you give me the circuit.

gm93d

10 years ago on Step 8

This is great but can you give me the circuit.

yissa

10 years ago on Introduction

Hi, great video =) could you please explain how you connected the resistors and LEDs with the speaker!!! And if I could use instead of a sound system, for seperate speakers connected to an amplifier? Looking forward to a response =)

tviskovic

10 years ago on Introduction

Do you have any sheme, if you have please post to comment.
Thanks!

onlystatic

11 years ago on Introduction

thank you. i think this is project is a great way to start out learning of L.E.D.S. i honestly think alot of people are missing the point of its simplicity. its a great learning tool and i appreciate you guys at HM-Innovations taking the time and effort to post it. thanks guys, keep up the good work and keep projects like these coming.