Holy Moly Barn! Are you sure you dont have a EE degree?

 

lol that too. I just really like how the M3 smg lights up when nearing the revlimit. It's mainly a gadgety thing than functionality for me, even though it does have a function. Not to mention it looks OEM!
ME<- sucker for the OEM look and finish

and EBMCS, no I took one HARD course in electronics and that's it, but my physics background helps.

 

Barnabas, did you get your LEDs from Mouser, and if so, which LED part #s are you using?

 

Yeah I did. I originally was going to go with surface mt LEDs, but decided it'd be easier to mount them if they were the traditional type with leads. The LEDs I got were Kingbright std LEDs. Reason I went with them is mainly due to the mcds.

I wanted something in the 40-60 range and these are about 50mcds. Most were either too low or too high, so these seem like a good choice. I'll probably have to buy more if they are too bright to dim. I'm going by the fact that the background LEDs are 14mcds.

part # 604-WP7104ID. There's more LED colors in that range. I'm using red, yellow, and orange.

 

Any videos online of a setup like this working? Sounds like an interesting project

 

Prototype videos will be up by next week hopefully after I get my parts, and video of it working in a car will be in 2 weeks.

 

Well here's a shot of only part of the circuit. Nothing exciting as I need to go buy some 12V batteries to test it out. I was too cheap to buy a breadboard with a built in power source hehe.

This is the LED circuit only, as the freq to voltage chip was backordered :(

 

Hahhahaha

 

Aw come on, don't laugh at my project!

 

I got to test the LED circuit and it works! Somewhat..lol I tried to vary the input voltage through a series of resistors but it only dropped 0.03v! That's through 80k ohms too. Soo, come Monday I'm going to hook it up to a variable voltage source. It does light up and dim like its supposed to, even though I had to fiddle w/ it through other means...and blew 2 fuses in the process lol

I'm getting impatient waiting for my parts to arrive

 

Thank you for sharing!

 

hehe you're welcome just you wait though until it's finished!

 

Can't wait to see it when it's done! Keep up the awesome work!

 

So I got all my parts in...wired them up ran it in my car. It would only light up part of the LEDs, and then at higher rpms LEDs would start to disappear! For some reason voltage was going down from the freq-voltage IC as rpms got higher! So after lots of revving and WOT runs up and down the street and testing with dvom figured out what my problem was..lol

I pulled a JPL. Hehehe. I mixed up nano and micro and ended up with a capacitor 1000x bigger than it should've! Wasn't reacting fast enough at the higher rpms (anything above 1.5k) and just started to decrease voltage lol. Hopefully when my new capacitors arrive it'll work.

 

Hahaha hope so.. when will you get them in?

 

Hopefully by the end of this week. Then I SHOULD get it working.

 

can wait until this works... i really want to see it work.

 

lol you and me both buddy. I just want to get this crap working and move onto a different project! lol

 

Well almost. hehe I finished wiring rest of the stuff in as I got rest of my parts in today and fiddled with it and attached to my car. I can say that it works and I have a video for those who're interested Anybody willing to host an 8mb file? I don't know how else to shrink it down

If you see the video you'll notice that the last LED isn't lighting up, and on the first rev all of them lights up by 6k. What I realized during testing was that whenever the fan relay kicks on, my voltage supply drops by 0.3 volts which is screwing up the upper rpm limit I set. A bit more tweaking is required and I need to put in a voltage regulator set to 12V. But all in all it's coming together and I'm 95% finished

If you'd like to see the movie PM me, and I'll IM you and send you the file. But hopefully somebody's willing to host so everyone can view

 

Love it! I want one

Very impressive

 

You can have one. Its on the house! All for free.

 

I want to see! Maybe you can host it via Google Video or YouTube or some free service like that?

 

oh yeah, thanks for that! I'll put it on google vids

EDIT: Ok uploaded on google videos. It's being verified so I don't know how long it's going to take but should show up if you type "mini shiftlight"

 

What do I look like, MINI salvation army?

 

No dice with the search can you link it?