AK-Z Posted April 3, 2005 Share Posted April 3, 2005 Look at what I did in 5 hours (not including removal of dash). I sure am proud of my work. I have to work on something that related to my car since I can't work ON my car (stupid snow). Its really brighter in person, so the oil so I can see the oil/temp gauge just fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlackBeaut Posted April 3, 2005 Share Posted April 3, 2005 Looking good! Did you do a custom wiring set up to use LEDs as back lighters or were you able to find some straight plug in types? BTW I'm pretty sure it's illegal to complain about snow if you live in Alaska Cheers, Rob Sunny(!!!) England. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
datsunlover Posted April 3, 2005 Share Posted April 3, 2005 Heh heh.. nice work man! What did you use for the faces? I used glosy white photo paper on mine (see my post a while back 'home made fak-0-meter guages) but I kept the stock lighting.. just removed the silly green plastic 'covers' from the back of the guages so they shine bright white. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cody 82 ZXT Posted April 3, 2005 Share Posted April 3, 2005 looks good Move to Texas! Lots of time to work on the car. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AK-Z Posted April 3, 2005 Author Share Posted April 3, 2005 I hard wired them in the LEDs in. At first I used label paper for the gauge faces, but it lood kinda cheesy so I kep those on there and used glossy paper and then ilaminated them and glued them onto the lable paper that I left on the gauges, for easy removal later on if I want to go back to the original look. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaime240z Posted April 3, 2005 Share Posted April 3, 2005 Wow those look really bright! Do you incorperate the oem dimmer knob to the new LEDs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest indy Posted April 3, 2005 Share Posted April 3, 2005 You can't really dim LED's, they are either on or they're off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AK-Z Posted April 4, 2005 Author Share Posted April 4, 2005 Yes they are incorperated to the original wiring. just add and sodiered them to the wires going to the bulbs. And yes the dimmer works. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AK-Z Posted April 4, 2005 Author Share Posted April 4, 2005 You can't really dim LED's, they are either on or they're off.uh, yes you can dim leds you just need a potentiometer with a greater range. A little electrical lesson for you Indy, a LED is a "Light Emmitting Diode," A diode is a type of circuit that lets eletrical current go in one direction, in this case the diode lights up when the circuit is complete. An LED is like a light bulb, but is a diode that produces very little heat (if your not overloading the LEDs load parameters) do to the lack of gas needed for it to produce light. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CybrStuff Posted April 4, 2005 Share Posted April 4, 2005 uh, yes you can dim leds you just need a potentiometer with a greater range. A little electrical lesson for you Indy, a LED is a "Light Emmitting Diode," A diode is a type of circuit that lets eletrical current go in one direction, in this case the diode lights up when the circuit is complete. An LED is like a light bulb, but is a diode that produces very little heat (if your not overloading the LEDs load parameters) do to the lack of gas needed for it to produce light. This is sort of the right idea, but you are a bit confused on the details. An LED works because the movement of electrons in the semiconductor material of which it is comprised (in the middle of all that plastic) produces light, whereas a light bulb works because a very thin filament carries a high current, causing it to get hot and glow. The reason that a light bulb has to be evacuated of most gas (and what gas that remains has to be an inert gas) is that otherwise the filament would completely burn up and disintegrate almost instantly (damned oxygen ). You are right that you can control the brightness of an LED with a correctly sized potentiometer, because it would regulate the amount of current driving the LED, however, a more sophisticated (and therefore appealing to me as an electrical engineer ) way to regulate the amount of light is by a technique called pulse-width modulation. You can find the details if you Google it, but I have to go to class. Enjoy! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buZy Posted April 4, 2005 Share Posted April 4, 2005 Way Cool Blues! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mario_82_ZXT Posted April 4, 2005 Share Posted April 4, 2005 This is sort of the right idea, but you are a bit confused on the details. An LED works because the movement of electrons in the semiconductor material of which it is comprised (in the middle of all that plastic) produces light, whereas a light bulb works because a very thin filament carries a high current, causing it to get hot and glow. The reason that a light bulb has to be evacuated of most gas (and what gas that remains has to be an inert gas) is that otherwise the filament would completely burn up and disintegrate almost instantly (damned oxygen ). You are right that you can control the brightness of an LED with a correctly sized potentiometer, because it would regulate the amount of current driving the LED, however, a more sophisticated (and therefore appealing to me as an electrical engineer ) way to regulate the amount of light is by a technique called pulse-width modulation. You can find the details if you Google it, but I have to go to class. Enjoy! Yeah, thats what they use in MegaSquirt if you have low impendance injectors. They recieve full juice then its switched on and off very rapidly. Can you make something like that with a knob for an OE dimmer? I was also thinking of white face gauges with LEDs (orange to keep it kinda stock) but I was wondering about the dimmer and diffusers. Anyways, awesome dash! Mario Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nismo280zEd Posted April 5, 2005 Share Posted April 5, 2005 Where did you purchase the LED's and what size did you use? I've been looking into doing this as well. Looks very nice! I plan on keeping the stock faces and just changing the illumination. -Ed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CybrStuff Posted April 5, 2005 Share Posted April 5, 2005 Can you make something like that with a knob for an OE dimmer? I'm sure it can be done, though it would take a bit of planning/research on what the resistance of the OE knob is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AK-Z Posted April 5, 2005 Author Share Posted April 5, 2005 You can get everything at radio shack. I just got the LEDs on ebay because it was cheaper with high MCD rating Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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