Have you checked out http://datasheets.led.net/ or
http://ledmuseum.home.att.net/ ? The latter is an interesting page for
those curious about LEDs. Great reviews of LEDs and related items.

Light On,

Ron

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf
Of Roger Reynolds
Sent: Friday, December 06, 2002 5:10 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Blue LED instrument lighting

Just to add two more cents worth... I am happy with the LED that I've
been running for a few months in the center (idiot light) position.  For
this one I used an orange, wide angle, LED from Radio Shack.  I liked
this best as it illuminated the idiot light symbols evenly and here, it
doesn't take a lot of light to illuminate well (as opposed to the speedo
and tachometer faces which require more because the light is reflected
back onto the faces).

So far, I have been unable to find what I would like: a wide angle,
super bright, blue LED, or perhaps a diffuse, super bright would do as
well.  I'll keep looking.

Roger

In a message dated 12/6/2002 3:32:12 PM Eastern Standard Time,
albell@UVIC.CA
writes:

> I was inspired by the German site and by Roger's work so yesterday at
> work while waiting for some E. coli to grow, I tried my hand a making
> a LED dash light.
>
> materials:
>
> red LED from bike light. Unsoldered from little board, which of course

> meant it only had very short "legs". Checked out to be approx. 1.8 V
> and a narrow beam spread (20 degrees?). "Flattened" area at base of
> LED indicates the negative post.
>
> resistor - 470 - 500 ohm (calculation/estimation based on a dash
> voltage of 10V and a LED voltage of 1.8)
>
> dash light bulb holder.
>
> some 22 gauge telfon insulated tinned copper wire (scraps at hand)
>
> heat shrink tubing.
>
>
> Method (made up as I went along):
>
> drilled 1/16" hole in base of bulb holder. Soldered 1" lengths of wire

> to the legs of the LED. shrunk small lengths of heat shrink over the
> solder joints. Cut one of the lengths of wire back to aprox 1/4" and
> removed insulation. Tinned/soldered the exposed wire to make solid.
> Bent that back upon itself to make a tight "V".
>
> The other wire is fed down through the bulb holder and out the drilled

> hole, The LED is pressed into the holder with the bent wire making
> contact with one of the internal bulb holder contact. The LED is a
> good fit and the bulb holder itself "stretches" a little to hold it in

> tight. I marked with a felt
> pen the side of the bulb holder that the LED was making contact with
the
> internal contacts.
>
> The wire sticking out of the base was trimmed a little and leg
> (trimmed
> also) of the resistor soldered to it. A very short length of wire was
> soldered to the other leg of the resistor.
>
> The free end of the short length of wire was soldered to the "topside"

> ie the side that does not come in contact with the circuit foil. This
> is a tricky part, you'll see how to solder it when/if you do it!
>
> A bit of heat shrink over the resistor and wires and its done!
>
> One has a 50% percent chance of getting it right when you twist it
> into the circuit foil, I don't know if these LEDs "pop" if full
> voltage is applied "backwards" so I inserted into foil with dash light

> rheostat turned way down.
>
>
> Well it works, but as Roger found too, the beam is quite narrow and
> only illuminates the top half of the gauge. The little reflector
> assembly might be modified (foil inside?) but better to have a wider
> beam spread LED.
>
> Inserted into the centre position, that is the bulb that lights up the

> idiot lights, the LED illuminates all of the icons but not evenly.
>
>
> The LED does dim with the rheostat, but does not go out at the
> lowest/dimmest setting.
>
> But I think it was a worthwhile exercise, now I'll go get a range of
> LEDs and experiment further.
>
> Alistair
>