LEDs Anyone? - GoFuckYourself.com

Ace-Ace · 11-20-2003, 09:47 PM

I have quite a bit of glass in my house. Was looking to possibly have a few LEDs on the edges of the glass (which will light the piece of glass up). Any idea what stuff I need?

Bulbs? Sockets? What power source? Any converters/resisters? Any sites that sell this stuff or explain it? Any help would be appreciated.

arg · 11-20-2003, 10:17 PM

LEDs don't normally use sockets because they're rated to last a hella long time, if you run within rated power specs. Power source is DC, so from a wall plug you'd want a transformer (those black thingies typically used to recharge cell phones and lots of other battery-powered gizmos), and you want to run a resister in in series with them (i.e. power connected to resistor, resistor connected to LED). Can't remember the values off the top of my head, but maybe something like a 660 ohm resister with a 5VDC power source for a single LED. You can modulate the brightness of the LED either by varying its current (with different resistors or a variable resistor, aka a potentiometer), or by pulsing it on and off very quickly in different ratios (i.e., one microsecond on, one microsecond off, produces a 50% brightness...two on, one off gives 66% brightness).

If you're not into all that electronics sort of stuff, I'd google for some LED christmas lights. It would be straight forward to modify that as you needed. Also, you might want to experiment with a single LED before you get a bunch of them, to see if it illuminates the glass like you're envisioning. If it's directly on the edge of flat glass, for example, I'd think most of the light is going to be viewable from other edges of the glass...like if you had a frame around the edges, but inside the frame an LED was shining at the edge of the glass, you probably wouldn't notice anything. But maybe edge illumination is what you want, or maybe the glass is irregular, in which case the effect is pretty unpredictable.

One other thing you might want to consider are some of the "color-changing" LEDs...basically these are three LEDs, red, green, and blue, packaged in close proximity, with a digital circuit that pulses them on and off in different ratios, to create gradually varying RGB values. You can buy these as ready-made circuits, usually as battery-operated novelties...like I saw some being sold for illuminating pumpkins recently.

gornyhuy · 11-20-2003, 10:34 PM

RadioShack lives for this kind of shit... even have "engineers mini notebooks" with circuits drawn out and resistor values and all that good stuff.

You can probably find something prebuilt that will look better and be less of a fire hazard though...

11-20-2003, 09:47 PM	#1
Ace-Ace Confirmed User Join Date: May 2002 Location: Dayton, OH, USA Posts: 1,863	LEDs Anyone? I have quite a bit of glass in my house. Was looking to possibly have a few LEDs on the edges of the glass (which will light the piece of glass up). Any idea what stuff I need? Bulbs? Sockets? What power source? Any converters/resisters? Any sites that sell this stuff or explain it? Any help would be appreciated. __________________ JamPlay.com - Online, video-based guitar lessons

11-20-2003, 10:34 PM	#3
gornyhuy Chafed. Join Date: May 2002 Location: Face Down in Pussy Posts: 18,041	RadioShack lives for this kind of shit... even have "engineers mini notebooks" with circuits drawn out and resistor values and all that good stuff. You can probably find something prebuilt that will look better and be less of a fire hazard though... __________________ icq:159548293

11-20-2003, 10:17 PM	#2
arg Confirmed User Join Date: Feb 2003 Posts: 1,164	LEDs don't normally use sockets because they're rated to last a hella long time, if you run within rated power specs. Power source is DC, so from a wall plug you'd want a transformer (those black thingies typically used to recharge cell phones and lots of other battery-powered gizmos), and you want to run a resister in in series with them (i.e. power connected to resistor, resistor connected to LED). Can't remember the values off the top of my head, but maybe something like a 660 ohm resister with a 5VDC power source for a single LED. You can modulate the brightness of the LED either by varying its current (with different resistors or a variable resistor, aka a potentiometer), or by pulsing it on and off very quickly in different ratios (i.e., one microsecond on, one microsecond off, produces a 50% brightness...two on, one off gives 66% brightness). If you're not into all that electronics sort of stuff, I'd google for some LED christmas lights. It would be straight forward to modify that as you needed. Also, you might want to experiment with a single LED before you get a bunch of them, to see if it illuminates the glass like you're envisioning. If it's directly on the edge of flat glass, for example, I'd think most of the light is going to be viewable from other edges of the glass...like if you had a frame around the edges, but inside the frame an LED was shining at the edge of the glass, you probably wouldn't notice anything. But maybe edge illumination is what you want, or maybe the glass is irregular, in which case the effect is pretty unpredictable. One other thing you might want to consider are some of the "color-changing" LEDs...basically these are three LEDs, red, green, and blue, packaged in close proximity, with a digital circuit that pulses them on and off in different ratios, to create gradually varying RGB values. You can buy these as ready-made circuits, usually as battery-operated novelties...like I saw some being sold for illuminating pumpkins recently.