Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

Getting leds to make patterns? (Custom turn signals idea, need help)

Status
Not open for further replies.

TooMuckinFuch

New Member
Sorry to invade your forum, but I'm not exactly sure how to google this...


The Plan:

I'd like to design my own tail lights for my car. Something unlike anything I've seen before or anything on the road that I know of. More specifically, the turn signals.

My idea is this.. I want to take apart a new set of taillights for my Lexus IS300 and remove the light fixtures on the inside, replacing them with a flat wall of black-painted fiberglass or plastic. I'm then going to drill out holes across the whole thing as close together as I can in a uniformed grid for the 5mm (I think?) standard sized LEDs. My goal is to get them to light up in a pattern or sweep from the one side to the other like a heart monitor or something... instead of the typical lights on - lights off blinkers.

The Question:

I'll need to keep the LED's on when I'm driving at night for the taillights, and have them light up brighter with brakes. I should be able to just wire every other one chess-board-style for the running lights and all of them together for the brake lights, right?

Here's the big question, finally! How would I get the columns of LEDs to light up in order to make it appear as if it's sliding from left to right about 8 LED's wide.



If you're confused, I'll try to.. uhm.. here.

X = column of lights turned off.
O = column of lights turned on.

Turn signal on:

OXXXXXXXXX <-- First flash
OOXXXXXXXX <-- Second flash, etc.
XOOXXXXXXX
XXOOXXXXXX
XXXOOXXXXX
XXXXOOXXXX
XXXXXOOXXX
XXXXXXOOXX
XXXXXXXOOX
XXXXXXXXOO
XXXXXXXXXO
OXXXXXXXXX
OOXXXXXXXX
XOOXXXXXXX

Of course it's on a bigger scale! Anyhow, I'm a lot more mechanically inclined than electronically, though I do know some stuff!

If you've made it this far, please share your ideas or shoot questions at me so I can explain anything I might have missed.

In advance: Thank You Thank You Thank You!!!
 
A lot of the effect will be lost when viewed through the lens
 
In Canada it is illegal to replace vehicle lighting because kids used cheap Chinese LED lighting for their cars that were not bright enough, were the wrong colour and had a viewing angle much too narrow. The kids got rear-ended in the daylight.
Your turn signal might not be bright enough with only 1 or 2 columns of LEDs lighted at a time.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top