# Let there be light...



## mattW (Sep 14, 2007)

Today's project while I was waiting for the controller to come was this little baby from Oatley Electronics; its an 18 Super-bright LED (24V) kit, modified for use in the Eeeveedub. After mistakenly ordering one module instead of two I decided I would be brave and split the printed circuit board into 3 sections. The first was the part that controls everything, including the switches and indicator light, and it is going to sit up on the 'dashboard' (well sort of clip onto the body near the steering wheel but you get the idea) in a jiffy box. The other two sections are the LED's in two lots of nine. Without going into too much detail, the board was actually made up of three lots of six LED's in parallel so splitting them involved some creative wiring. This is the third kit that I have put together now and I perhaps was overconfident in my approach in moving away from standard but I thought that 1.8W worth of LED's is probably enough on a little kids car. So I took a deep breath, made sure I checked and rechecked where everything was going and prayed that after hours of soldering my patience would be rewarded with glowing bliss. And the result? Success!!!









....and minor failure. When I tentatively hooked up my little circuit to the batteries I was greeted with the shiny brilliance of two glowing headlights! And as I suspected one set was more than enough, these thing gave out a lot of light. The one minor problem was that the little switches that are supposed to turn the lights on and off failed to do anything; the headlights just kept shining and little Red LED indicator light kept barely glowing as dimly as an LED possibly could. So mixed results but I was overall quite happy. If the lights hadn't come on at all I wouldn't have known where to start to fix it. I suspect there is something wrong with the way I've wired up the switches in trying to mount them on top of the jiffy box (see picture).









I'm saving the problem solving for tomorrow, I think I have done enough for one day. I'm going to an shop to get some more bits and pieces too which should be fun also. Today was a small step in the overall car but a pretty big leap in terms of my willingness to step outside the square and go with my own plan... its is one of those quietly confident moments.


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