3 Colour LED Charge Indicator - opinions?

[bakalorz]

I'm using these LED's for prototyping but I'll current limit the super bright ones coming for my gauges and use some of them behind some tinted plastic I think. I know that doesn't make sense right now, but I can see it in my mind...

The 3914 does the current limiting for you by adjusting some of the resistors ... tell me what current you are looking for and I'll run the numbers ... right now its set to 10 -12 ma / segment, only 1 segment on at a time ... when the bike runs the voltage bounces around, so the "on" segment moves around much faster than the eye can see, so it appears that multiple segments are on.

 

[Guest]

The 3914 does the current limiting for you by adjusting some of the resistors ... tell me what current you are looking for and I'll run the numbers ... right now its set to 10 -12 ma / segment, only 1 segment on at a time ... when the bike runs the voltage bounces around, so the "on" segment moves around much faster than the eye can see, so it appears that multiple segments are on.

Yes I read that along the line somewhere...

If it's set now to 10 - 12 mA, then that may be ok with the super brights.

What I'm hoping to achieve though is making the low end and high end LED's brighter than the rest to catch my attention.

As I'll be using 20000 mcd white LED's, I'm hoping to find some translucent green and red plastic to put over the top, so the "good" range is green, and over and under voltage is red, and I want those LED's to be noticeably brighter. Of course it will require careful calibration but because you've put the trimpots in that should be straight forward, and a dab of silicon once setup should stop them from adjusting unintentionally with vibration.

If 10 - 12mA is OK for the brightest desired LED's (over/under voltage), then I'll just add extra resistors inline with the anode of the LED's I want to be less bright (good voltage) to current limit them some more.

Make any sense?

 

[bakalorz]

Yes I read that along the line somewhere...

If it's set now to 10 - 12 mA, then that may be ok with the super brights.

What I'm hoping to achieve though is making the low end and high end LED's brighter than the rest to catch my attention.

As I'll be using 20000 mcd white LED's, I'm hoping to find some translucent green and red plastic to put over the top, so the "good" range is green, and over and under voltage is red

FWIW ... When I was reading about using LED replacements for taillight bulbs, one of the suggestions was NOT to use white LEDs in colored plastic housings because they tended not to be bright enough, but to use red or amber LEDs. The reason as I remember it was that the White LEDs make several colors, but a lot of it gets absorbed in the housing, wasting a lot of the light that was made, while the red LEDs made only the red out of the energy they used, most of which was transmitted.

So if the white LEDS behind translucent red are not bright enough, try getting some red LEDs. (I personally think using red and green LEDs is WAY EASIER to do than building a decent looking translucent red and green housing anyway ...)

, and I want those LED's to be noticeably brighter. Of course it will require careful calibration but because you've put the trimpots in that should be straight forward, and a dab of silicon once setup should stop them from adjusting unintentionally with vibration.

I really really really doubt the trimpots will move from vibration
...
...
...

STOP ... WAIT ...This isn't going on a Harley Davidson is it ? ...get the pitchforks and torches ... BURN THE HERETIC !!!!!!!111!!!!


If 10 - 12mA is OK for the brightest desired LED's (over/under voltage), then I'll just add extra resistors inline with the anode of the LED's I want to be less bright (good voltage) to current limit them some more.

OK, that makes sense ... I thought you just wanted all of them dimmer. The extra resistors should work fine the way you want to do it.

Make any sense?

Aarghhh ... the stupid posting software thinks I didn't write anything and is making me put text here ....

 

[Guest]

Cool, I have heard the same about coloured LED's vs. coloured lenses, but I'm ordering 100 as part of replacing the bulbs in my gauges so I'll have plenty to spare. I figured 20000mcd should certainly overcome any brightness issues

And don't worry, definitely not going on a Harley either

Sounds like my plan will work in theory, so as long as I can get the practical side sorted I should be laughing.

Now to hurry up and wait for those 100 LED's to arrive...

 

[Guest]

100 LED's and 100 resistors arrived today :dancing:



So I'll take care of my gauge conversion first then will come back to this.

 

[Matchless]

100 LED's and 100 resistors arrived today :dancing:



So I'll take care of my gauge conversion first then will come back to this.

Much more affordable that way!

 

[Guest]

Much more affordable that way!

Definitely! Something like $1 - 2 each if I buy locally...

 

[Guest]

Rightio, back into it tonight!

Firstly, Martin I feel like an idiot because I just did what I think you may have done... wasn't thinking and hooked up the power with reverse polarity a few days ago... resulting in one popped electrolytic and two blown IC's... bugger.

Picked replacements up yesterday and I'm adding a diode to stop this happening again seeing as the 0.6v or thereabouts drop can be compensated for with the calibration.



I couldn't find a similar prototyping board so I'm sticking with what I already have from my ignitor work, so I've removed a couple of rows of tracks to split the halves:



And I completely got myself confused with doing this on the reverse side of the board and ended up removing the wrong section of tracks to what I planned, so I'm going to end up with the trimpots on the left of the IC's rather than the right. I also need to have vertical + and - rails due to the layout of this board.

So I've got a couple of components in and some jumpers to make some + and - rails and you'll also see the 1N4004 diode there to protect from stupidity in future:

 

[Guest]

Be warned that the pic I'm about to post is ugly... horrible... shows how awful the most rookie mistakes can look when using prototype boards for circuits...



Very close to done now, just three more resistors and the capacitors to go before I'll be happy to solder in the IC's and look at attaching the LED's.

My big rookie mistakes were not laying out the components properly first, and then not putting the links and jumpers down before the components, so as you can see it's ended up spread out further than I would've liked and there are link leads going over resistors.

While it won't make a difference to the functionality, it's not exactly pretty and makes it difficult to follow and double check your work.

So, my tips should you wish to also follow this design...

- Make sure you get a good circuit board along the lines of what Martin (Bakalorz) used inititally which will allow it to be much neater (I couldn't find one)
- Lay the components out to understand fully where things will need to go
- Do the links and jumpers before putting any components down

 

[Guest]

Well, on the one hand the board gets uglier, on the other hand it's done bar the IC's and LED's:



I'm currently keeping an eye out for red and green translucent plastic and am also thinking about how I'm going to mount it up, which will of course directly influence how I connect the LED's to the board.

 

[Guest]

Finished it up except for the LED's tonight. Put 12v to it before mounting the IC's and measure around the place with the multimeter to make sure I had no shorts and that was all good.



I haven't powered it up since mounting the IC's but there should be no dramas. Won't really be able to tell if it's working as expected or not until I get the LED's connected anyway.

Oh, and one thing I neglected to mention last night was I ended up going with 12K ohm resistors for the four LED's that are ghost lit all the time instead of 22K ohm. I figured by the time I put them behind some sort of translucent plastic, they'd be too dim, so that should up the current enough for them still to be visible.

My intention at the moment is to get it in some sort of case mounted to the bottom of the gauge cluster, and run some leads out of the case to the LED's, which I'm hoping to mount to the front side of the gauge cluster so they appear level at the top/front for easy visibility.

I'm intending to fit a small fly screen, so that should keep most of the UV light off it and give it a little weather protection also.

I have some curled up ribbon cable from a PC sitting doing nothing, so I'll probably use that to go from the board to the LED's:



Seeing as both sides will be solidly mounted, there should be no flex on the leads.

I did contemplate mounting the LED's directly to the board and mounting the whole thing to the front of the gauge cluster, but due to my poor layout, the board and its case will be wider than the flat centre section of the gauges and won't blend in nicely with them.

 

[bakalorz]

Finished it up except for the LED's tonight. Put 12v to it before mounting the IC's and measure around the place with the multimeter to make sure I had no shorts and that was all good.



I haven't powered it up since mounting the IC's but there should be no dramas. Won't really be able to tell if it's working as expected or not until I get the LED's connected anyway.

Oh, and one thing I neglected to mention last night was I ended up going with 12K ohm resistors for the four LED's that are ghost lit all the time instead of 22K ohm. I figured by the time I put them behind some sort of translucent plastic, they'd be too dim, so that should up the current enough for them still to be visible.

My intention at the moment is to get it in some sort of case mounted to the bottom of the gauge cluster, and run some leads out of the case to the LED's, which I'm hoping to mount to the front side of the gauge cluster so they appear level at the top/front for easy visibility.

I'm intending to fit a small fly screen, so that should keep most of the UV light off it and give it a little weather protection also.

I have some curled up ribbon cable from a PC sitting doing nothing, so I'll probably use that to go from the board to the LED's:



Seeing as both sides will be solidly mounted, there should be no flex on the leads.

I did contemplate mounting the LED's directly to the board and mounting the whole thing to the front of the gauge cluster, but due to my poor layout, the board and its case will be wider than the flat centre section of the gauges and won't blend in nicely with them.

I was away for the long weekend, and didn't get a chance to reply yesterday, but a few comments:

I was going to suggest using a diode to you, but figured that since you heard my tale of woe of blowing mine up that there was no way that you would do that too ...
I'll probably use a Schottky diode for the slightly lower drop.

I am planning to redo mine.
I will make an etched board, to allow me to move things around and fit everything behind the LEDS. I have and plan to use surface mount resistors but will probably try to make the board so that either can fit.
---
Dont' know if you want to wait, but that will make the whole thing about 2.1 inches wide, by half an inch high, by 2 or 3 inches deep, which should make it fit well on top of the guage center "tower".
You would need to get the other kind of bar LEDs though.

If you still can, change the ends that things connect to all three of the pots.
(for example, on the right pot, run V+ to the end near the screwdriver slot, and run ground to the "back" of the pot)
That will make it more intuitive to adjust the pots.
I was thinking about it backwards when I designed it:
turning the pot clockwise raises the voltage, but that makes the led go down the scale ...

 

[Guest]

I was away for the long weekend, and didn't get a chance to reply yesterday, but a few comments:

I was going to suggest using a diode to you, but figured that since you heard my tale of woe of blowing mine up that there was no way that you would do that too ...
I'll probably use a Schottky diode for the slightly lower drop.

Haha yeah well... I was a bit, well peeved off at the time so I just sort of forgot to calm down and think before I plugged it in...

I am planning to redo mine.
I will make an etched board, to allow me to move things around and fit everything behind the LEDS. I have and plan to use surface mount resistors but will probably try to make the board so that either can fit.
---
Dont' know if you want to wait, but that will make the whole thing about 2.1 inches wide, by half an inch high, by 2 or 3 inches deep, which should make it fit well on top of the guage center "tower".
You would need to get the other kind of bar LEDs though.

That should work well, and will definitely make it more compact.

At the moment it all depends on the rest of the bike for me. I finally have it booked in to get the exhaust done at the end of June, so as soon as I get it back, I hope to get back to testing that ignition out.

I suspect I won't get this finished up and mounted before then as I really need to get onto making the rear mudguard fit ready for painting too, but I hope to at least get the LED's mounted so I can test it out.

Definitely let me know when you get to it and I'll see how things are looking my end.

If you still can, change the ends that things connect to all three of the pots.
(for example, on the right pot, run V+ to the end near the screwdriver slot, and run ground to the "back" of the pot)
That will make it more intuitive to adjust the pots.
I was thinking about it backwards when I designed it:
turning the pot clockwise raises the voltage, but that makes the led go down the scale ...

I'll leave them how they are on this one as I can follow what's in your instructions relatively simply with it, and the way my layout on the board is I've really done myself no favours in making it a little more flexible like that Good idea though...

 

[Guest]

Well I got these in the mail today:



LED clips, PCB mounts, and a case.

As it turns out, there's some standoffs moulded into the bottom of the case, so I probably won't need the mounts.

I did discover though that the case is about 5mm or so too deep to fit between the gauges and the back of the headlight shell, so I need to either rethink that or cut it down a bit which is possible.

However, that does mean no progress until I can sort that out. Won't know how to connect the LED's until I get the mounting sorted.

 

[Guest]

Had a closer look tonight at mounting the case, and it's more like 10mm too deep for underneath the gauges, so scrap that location as I can't trim the height down that much due to the height of mounting the board and the electrolytic capacitor.

So, played around a bit and discovered once I get all the cables and brake hose routed properly, there should be enough room to mount it vertically between the bottom of the headlight ears and I should be able to just use a couple of cable ties for it:



That means I need a longer set of leads to reach where the LED's will mount on top of the gauges, but fortunately I found another old IDE ribbon cable that's much longer:



Started soldering it up but didn't get too far as I must finish up in time for MotoGP:



Once I sort out the LED end, I should be able to curl the ribbon cable up and cable tie it so it's not intrusive.

This is taking somewhat of a back seat at the moment though as I need to get things tidied up ready for the trip to Tranzac in just over two weeks. I'll only do more to this if I can't do anything else...

 

[Guest]

Ended up in somewhat of a holding pattern tonight as I couldn't get any connectors for the tail light today, but hopefully my house mate will be able to pick some up tomorrow.

So, I finished soldering up the ribbon cable to the PC board end and stripped off the unnecessary wires:



Next time I get back to it I'll have to find something to mount the LED's to that will bend around the top of the gauge cover as 20 LED's will be longer than the flat section in the middle.

Once that's done I can solder the LED's to the other end and start working out some sort of casing for them. Still need to get some red/green translucent material yet too.

 

[Guest]

I haven't touched this for ages as other things are higher priority now (like tank lining and some parts painting etc.), but I did at least manage to pick up some dodgy cheap containers that should work ok for the coloured lenses:

 

[Guest]

Wow, two months since I've made any real progress on this!

Anyway, did a little tonight, got the twenty LED's mounted using an old ice cream container. It's a little bit too flexible, but should be fine once I've glued it into an enclosure of some sort that I can mount up to the gauges.

I've got one strip of ten for across the top of the gauges, and two strips of five to go down each side on the angle.

I can now solder these up and see if the circuit actually works now that it's soldered up, and if it does I can mount it in the enclosure and work out what to do for making an enclosure for the LED's themselves and getting that mounted up to the gauges.



I also did decide not to use an extra resistor on the ones that will be behind the green lense, instead I'll see if I can add multiple layers of the green lense to dull that down a little. I really want the red sections to stand out, but don't want to be unnecessarily distracted by the green sections, if that makes sense...

 

[Guest]

Separated the ends of the ribbon cable ready to solder to the LED's tonight, rather tedious that:



Then I did something rather dodgy that will solve the problem of how to link all the LED's positive leads together:



Looks ugly, but should be very much functional as long as I stick some heatshrink on all the negative leads.

Starting to wonder if I should abort this thread and return it back to my rebuild thread... anyone still following this or am I rambling to myself?