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Shift light tacho needle cluster mod 

 

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Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2005 7:30 pm 
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Blu Falc wrote:
i didnt have a res in series with the pot and led i just had the pot and the led. you said there is no such thing as a dimmable led then how would having a pot and a resistor give you the control to dim it? If you just had the pot set above 560 ohms then it would have the same effect as a 560 ohm resistor but increasing the resistance did not affect the brightness of the led. correct me if i have gone off on tangents or have the wrong idea.

Oh by the way jaycar sells those dimmable LED's i was talking about but they are not cheap


A LED is a LED is a LED.

The fancy smacy expesnvie dimmable ones, are dimmable because they've got something there controlling them. There's two popular ways to dim a LED.

1. Reduce the current going through it, normally by reducing the forward voltage (ie. a pot).
Easy, Cheap, Wasteful (extra electicity is wasted as heat by the reistor)

2. PWM (Pulse Width Modulation), but rapidly flashing the LED (often in the 1000s per sec), you can make the LED appear as bright or dim as possible, by varying the on and off time periods.
Not so easy, Not so cheap, Effiecent.

#1, most LEDs want about 20-25mA to run at a good brightness. Drop that down to 10mA and they'll be dim'ed (note LEDs are not linear, so the dimness won't be half).

A LED that wants a forward voltage of 2.5V (normal for high brightness red/blue/white/green LEDs) running from a 13.8V source (car on), would want a 560Ohm resistor to run it at 20mA. Want to dim it to 10mA use a 1.1KOhm resistor.

Math for you to figur eout what you need for your LEDs.

Vin (Voltage In) = 13.8V
Vf (forward voltage) = 2.5V (or whatever your LED wants)
If (forward current) = 0.020A (=20mA or whatever current you want to run the LED at)

Vin - Vf = Vd (voltage drop)
Vd / If = R (resistance needed on Ohms)

13.8 - 2.5 = 11.3
11.3 / 0.020 = 565
11.3 / 0.010 = 1130
11.3 / 0.025 = 452

The Narva LED replacements, run an 860Ohm resistor, which makes them far to dim (13mA). So I swapped mine with 560Ohm resistors.

 

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Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2005 8:23 pm 
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have any advancements been made on this dash mod?
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Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2005 8:31 pm 
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ive been workin on school stuff recently with exams and outcomes and s**t, so ive put it on the back burner... ill get round to it later on this year ;)
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Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2005 8:33 pm 
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fair enough
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Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 11:17 pm 
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I've been looking into this type of mod. How I'm going about it is to program a PIC micro to read the pulsed signals to the speedo and tacho then control RGB led's to change colors at different speeds and revs. And also start to flash Red on redline and 120+k's.
But at this stage its still a bunch of components stuck in a breadboard.
I think the hardest part will be modding the dash so the colors don't wash over each other. :cry:

 

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Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 11:39 pm 
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yeah i though it would be a peice of cake puttin it in, but between hot gluing leds in and stickin circut boards down in the cluster, its becoming one of those "ill do it on the weekend but never get around to doing it" jobs...
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Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2005 12:19 am 
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you should do this mod man, i likes the idea of it. Although my car never gets near the redline, it'll still be a cool little thing to have on there.

Hope it works in due time!
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Posted: Wed Aug 17, 2005 1:25 pm 
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I'll hopefully be getting a new cluster soon, so may join the work force, if someone wants to help me get up to speed with components/design.

 

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Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 12:23 pm 
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ill email ya some diagrams/part numbers and stuff data_mine, pm me ya address.

im also looking to assemble a team to work out a way of replacing E series door locks to AU, and before you start i know people think it cant be done, but i think it can, so anyone who wants to be part of FM history and do the impossible - sign up!

ryan
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Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 12:58 pm 
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I'd love AU locking solenoids.

Although the E series ones sound like you've got some huge bank vault type deadlock being put into place.

PM on it's way.

 

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Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2005 11:21 pm 
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data_mine wrote:
I'd love AU locking solenoids.

Although the E series ones sound like you've got some huge bank vault type deadlock being put into place.

PM on it's way.


instead of smartlock it should be vaultlock!

 

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Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2005 1:35 am 
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Sounds like it would look preety good....how would you do it????
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Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2005 1:35 am 
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Sounds like it would look preety good....how would you do it????
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Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2005 1:46 am 
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whats difference between ef and au locks?

 

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Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2005 1:50 am 
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i suggest starting a new thread to deal with the issue of the locks.
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