Best Cheap Light Setup

[healthyfatboy]

Okay, so I thought I would start this thread to get it going. We know of the Wal-Mart lights see this post (http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8709716&postcount=3) but what are some other good alternatives to put on a parkflyer?

[Dakrat]

I have another Walmart special!
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=754427
just hot glue the rubber rings to your plane or velcro them down so you can take them off for day time ops!
Dak

[TheEpoxyFlyer]

Cant wait to see more picture posted shwoing off their air craft lit up. :cool:

Go to Target & they have 3MM battery operated LED Christmas lights. It only cost $5. They are powered by 4 AA batteries that total 6V. To lighten the weight, replace with a 9V. These LED's already have the resitor attached & they glow bright. Stock up for the next year! :D Another altrernative is connecting the LED's to the receiver in the air craft. ;)

[jimsp]

You really don’t need to limit yourself to the battery operated LED Christmas lights. They are all in the same voltage range. The 110V strings simply have the LED's in series. I picked up some 60 light strings for about $7. The individual LED’s pull out easily similar to the incandescent strings. They will probably be halve price after Christmas.

[Tha Hodgehound]

Buy LEDs in bulk. Different colors, and get some of the very thin "Magnet Wire" used for winding electric motors. You can get it at Radio Shack, but do not get your LEDs there! They are WAY overpriced and not nearly as bright as those you can get most anywhere online. I get mine from www.oznium.com I got 25-30 for 12 bucks including resistors and shipping! Just wire them in parallel, positive leads to one wire-negative to another. Hook a male rec. plug to it and plug it in. It's a little time consuming with the soldering gun, but it is definately worth it. Take a look at my blog to see my first "true night flyer".... http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/member.php?u=29540

[crxmanpat]

One of you "lighting experts" ought to create a "How To" sticky thread, and provide info on how to solder up lights and what type of resistors to use. I have those Wal-Mart specials, but my attempts to hook them up to my RX have all met in failure. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Pat

[TheEpoxyFlyer]

One of you "lighting experts" ought to create a "How To" sticky thread, and provide info on how to solder up lights and what type of resistors to use. I have those Wal-Mart specials, but my attempts to hook them up to my RX have all met in failure. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Pat

Pat,
Get with me sometime this next week & I can give you some tips for what I have done. Anyone down at the bowl knows my plane lights up bright enough to illuminate the ground when 30 feet in the air. :D I have no problems keeping it oriented. :)
Now we need to get past this rain period... :censored: and the flooding of the bowl!

[fly4fun]

One of you "lighting experts" ought to create a "How To" sticky thread, and provide info on how to solder up lights and what type of resistors to use. I have those Wal-Mart specials, but my attempts to hook them up to my RX have all met in failure. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Pat


Pat please explain your failures. I got all my over priced LEDs at Frys Electronics and with the proper resister I had no problems hooking them up the Spare RX ports.

[crxmanpat]

Don't know if I hosed up the wiring or what. The Wal-Mart lights come with a small switch, with a resistor in line. I took an old servo connector and hooked up the + and - and plugged into my free RX channel (rudder), but no joy. Even kept the resistor in line as it was connected.

Pat

[Lee]

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=766806

I have been using the small 12V Christmas lights.

I bought a portable battery operated 10 light Christmas light set at Walmart for $1. I then cut off the battery box and put a small plug on the cord which is already made. I replaced the 3.5V lights with 12V replacement lights on the sets I am using but if you have a single cell lipo you could run them the way they are. The whole set up costs about $3 and runs off my 3S lipo. These lights are bright and easy to see.

If you want to use a single Lipo cell or the attached battery box you don't have to change the bulbs for the 12V bulbs.

There is a better explaination and a video on the above thread. If you are going to use Christmas lights you better get them before the season is over.



.

[Mark Harris]

I've always found these guys to have really good prices:
http://stores.ebay.com/Light-of-Victory-Led-Store-lvehk

[warhead_71]

So, my Target LEDs are in my BluBaby now. I have 12 white LEDs wired in parallel and plugged directly into my RX with no resistor... the resistor that came with the string broke, so I'm using it without and it seems to work fine. Nothing fancy this go-around - just have two bundles of 6 pointed up at the wings so the wings are well-lit from underneath. Next time I'll get some telephone wire and run marker lights all over the plane.... maybe I'll purpose-build a larger Geobat for night flying.

EDIT - just took it for a spin. Looks great - but with the LEDs all pointing up at the wing (they are positioned just above the LG and fan out up at the wing), I lose the plane when banking towards me - because I don't see the reflected light. Still - not bad for a $5 experiment. Lots of fun.

[dfalcon]

I just ordered my third bunch of 100 LED's from freebay:

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=100PCS%2CUltra+Bright

Both of the first orders arrived in exactly two weeks. The first order had 25ea. of red, white, green, and blue; and the second bunch had 20ea. of the same 4 colors as before and yellow also.

My first night flyer is still being framed up, but I did test the bulbs out a little, lighting them with the 6V ParkBEC that will also be onboard. I'm pretty pleased with the quality and the brightness, but I've already burned out 2 red ones in the process of finding out that the red operate at 2V, and all the others use 3V.

I walked into radio shack and couldn't believe what they were asking for the brighter LED's (~$5 per LED!), so I'm content waiting 2 weeks for them to arrive and only paying $.07/bulb. I did have to order some resistors separately, but ended up paying $4 for 100 of them.

[Wayne V]

dfalcon, the reason you are burning out LEDS is not the voltage it's the amperage, the 2v and 3v you said is the voltage drop across the diode, to be safe always add at least a 330 ohm resistor and then you can hook it straight up to 7.4-12v and not burn it out, most LEDS like between 10-30ma of current thru them. As for hooking them up to an empty RX port i would be careful, if your ESC BEC won't supply enough current to run your leds and all your servos and also the rx you might be having some problems, i usually add a JST connector when soldering deans connectors onto my ESC's so i have a plugin spot for my lighting.

[healthyfatboy]

Does anyone have a picture of what the LED Christmas lights look like from Wal-Mart or Target (a picture of the box or brand name would be nice). I was just there and the only thing I saw that was battery powered were globe lights by Sylvania.

[crxmanpat]

Does anyone have a picture of what the LED Christmas lights look like from Wal-Mart or Target (a picture of the box or brand name would be nice). I was just there and the only thing I saw that was battery powered were globe lights by Sylvania.Here you go. These are sometimes hard to locate as they are in just a little white display box. The box has a "try me" button on the front.

Here's what the individual packs look like:

[Daemon]

Check out the light kits available from Canuk Engineering (http://www.canuckengineering.com/store/index.php?cPath=22_23)
They're inexpensive, you can choose your own colors and he'll
build you setup with all custom wire lengths if you need it.

http://www.thud.us/images/rc/led-bee-front.jpg
http://www.thud.us/images/rc/led-bee-zion1.jpg


ian

[the_canuck]

Thanks for the plug Ian.

I offer a couple different setups. One for the non soldering types and another DIY kits where soldering is needed. 5 lights per harness for the non solder setup. Up to 15 lights per harness for the DIY setup.

For slopers 10 LEDs is about min. I've done as many as 30 on a 60" plane.

Flying at night is tons of fun. Even thermalling is possible. Combat is a real blast.

DS combat at night is just insane!

Here's a tutorial on installing a couple light kits in a Bee:
http://www.canuckengineering.com/LEDTips


Andrew
www.canuckengineering.com/store

[Pudknocker71]

I'm doing a cheap Target LED setup with my build. I'll post a few pictures here as I go along.

Seems every step of the way I find new challenges. I'm building a GWS Pico stick-f from a NPS slope kit. I've been painting and carving and gluing and taping and binding wire for 2 weeks now (part time). The LED set-up is ugly but this is a cheap build altogether. Maybe next time I'll do all the work necessary to make this look good. It's all taped in for now. I'm not even sure what the color pattern is. just hope it flies at all when I get done!

One might say literally.... On a Wing and a Prayer!

[Ejbbal21]

What the best place online to get Bright LED?

[Darth_Elevator]

What the best place online to get Bright LED?There's some online vendors listed in a thread over here: http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=784718

I've ordered three times from this eBay seller and have never had a problem: http://stores.ebay.com/Chi-Wing-LED-product-shop_W0QQcolZ2QQdirZQ2d1QQfsubZ0QQftidZ2QQpZ2QQtZk m. Here's an example, 100 bright white LEDs for $18 shipped, and they come with free resistors (matched for 12 volt power supply): http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-NEW-100-Super-White-LED-5mm-18000mcd-Free-S-H_W0QQitemZ140200664456QQihZ004QQcategoryZ66952QQc mdZViewItem

If you want smaller quantities and don't mind paying more per LED, I've heard www.superbrightleds.com is a good place.

[TheEpoxyFlyer]

What the best place online to get Bright LED?

Best thing I found is just put "3MM LED resitors" or "5MM LED resitors" into EBay. There are tons of selections & also you can order any size like 3, 5, 10MM, colored or bright whites.

[Ejbbal21]

There's some online vendors listed in a thread over here: http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=784718

I've ordered three times from this eBay seller and have never had a problem: http://stores.ebay.com/Chi-Wing-LED-product-shop_W0QQcolZ2QQdirZQ2d1QQfsubZ0QQftidZ2QQpZ2QQtZk m. Here's an example, 100 bright white LEDs for $18 shipped, and they come with free resistors (matched for 12 volt power supply): http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-NEW-100-Super-White-LED-5mm-18000mcd-Free-S-H_W0QQitemZ140200664456QQihZ004QQcategoryZ66952QQc mdZViewItem

If you want smaller quantities and don't mind paying more per LED, I've heard www.superbrightleds.com is a good place.

Do you have to use diffrent Resistors for an RC setup? I will be useing my Reciver 4V I think (Either Electron 6 or Berg)

[Ejbbal21]

Also, how do you set it up so you can turn it on and off with one of your Chanels? I have a 7 chan radio. I know how to do it on the Radio side how about the Reciver side?

[Darth_Elevator]

Do you have to use diffrent Resistors for an RC setup? I will be useing my Reciver 4V I think (Either Electron 6 or Berg)Yes, you will need different resistors if you run off your rx. I run off my main battery back and the 12V resistors work fine.

[Darth_Elevator]

Also, how do you set it up so you can turn it on and off with one of your Chanels? I have a 7 chan radio. I know how to do it on the Radio side how about the Reciver side?I use this switch from Dimension Engineering: http://www.dimensionengineering.com/PicoSwitch.htm

[Ejbbal21]

Thanks for the info I will be placeing an order this next week

[supertiger]

mmm

[EP Dean]

For Crxmanpat:

I know this is a little late to the party, but I do get into a bit of detail when it comes to soldering up LED's coupled with resistors in this build thread:

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=488196

The real problem with LEDS is that I found that even same branded LEDs offer up different resistances when coloured differently as they also have different mcd ratings per colour. We purposely let the smoke out of a few of each of the colours I had on hand to see what the best fit for resistors would be for each colour.

[crxmanpat]

Dean,

Thanks for the link! That information will come in handy.

Pat

[nubee 1]

Well I guess it's time I tried to light up one of my Blue Babys.

How about the UV's under a white wing ? Just wondering how they would work.

Ken

[supertiger]

Ya the UV leds are great looking but they are not the kind of light you would want to use for long distance sight. but they look good as background light. I use them to light up the inside of the fuse and use the other colors for lighting up the wing and tail secition of the plane. the UV make a beutiful purple color that reflects off other colored surfaces nice.
I wonder why almost no one uses LEDs on regular glow fuel planes but me. Almost all the Planes that do night flying are Electric planes and helis.? It must just me the mess the fuel makes

[Santini]

Here are my Trexes with 8mm 360 degree superbrights. These you can spot from another planet.

Santini V2 Torch Project (http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9406964&postcount=615)

[Darth_Elevator]

Great setup, Santini, where'd you get your 360 degree LEDs?

[Santini]

I get them at superbrightleds.com. Go back to the link, and hit the button on top right to open the thread, and go back several posts. I've posted across several builds what I did and where I got things. Probably spent $30 bucks and did 5 light set ups so far..

8mm IMO is where you want to be. These are 20mah, in parallel, x6, plugged into the receiver - not much current. 360 DEG gives ideal dispersion, much better than 5mm wides. FOr example, the blue LED in the belly of the best is a high output 5MM 120 deg, which I use to light the main gear and innerds, but it pales compared to the 8MM.

dispersion and MCD are an interesting trade off, plus this is not a regulated things, so claims are not of much value. This is a good vendor and quality LEDS. I bought the resistors from digikey. Wire from ratshack. Pretty simple, it's just a matter of finding the right leds and planning a good lighting scheme.