Looks good! Very impressed with the work!

Thanks guys.

Hope to get a few more boards done this weekend.

tedious indeed! very impressed with your knowledge and skill. I recall a few years back, some guy did a complete led tail light conversion and posted it on youtube. Really cool looking modification IMO.

found the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6sZg3iL5EY

That's azdave's old Eclipse, he's since sold it.
He did an awesome job on his tails, much more involved then mine.

Got almost all of the boards for one tail light done. I still need to redesign the final board that goes right in the corner.


Here they are in the tail light. The boards are not mounted so it looks a little off.


With the lens on running at 5 volts. On the corner of the light I need something to defuse the LEDs but I'm not sure what. Again the boards aren't mounted so they look a bit off.



With 12V on them to get an idea of full brightness.


I got one of the lower center section boards done. I still have another to do and 1 more that I might redo completely. The board in the pictures needs 2 more LEDs but I don't have the right SMD resistor on hand.



Here's all the center section boards behind the center section to get an idea of what it will look like. These are run at 9V via my Vregs.


I also did a bit of testing to see how hot things are getting and left the lower center section board on the 9V Vreg for about 15-20 minutes. The temp never rose from what's on the gun.


I've still have a lot left to do, I haven't even started working on my power supplies or PWMs yet, I need to protype them first on the bread board. I need to drill more boards so I can populate them with LEDs and resistors for the other tail light. I also need to sit down and play with some of the amber LEDs on the bread board to see what mA to run them at for the name plate LEDs, I'm thinking around 50-60mA will be good. I want them bright but not brighter then the brakes or turns, close to the same brightness as the markers is fine though.
I also need to buy more copper clad board and PNP Blue.

Well some minor updates.
First here's a video of what the Front turns will look like. I of course have to rebuild this board because it needs more LEDs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69U2a99x-4s&feature=youtu.be

Here's the new brick of Red-Amber LEDs I picked up. G13 bin, I think I've got the right resistors but I need to run my math again.


I picked up more PCB material from ABCFab on eBay, Bill is awesome and his stuff is top notch! FR-4 .030 thick black backed 1/2 oz (if memory serves me right) copper.


I also built the back to my center section out of plastic recently. I need to fit the tail lights on to the car to get the spacing correct.


I did try to fit the back piece to my friend's car but I found out that there were 2 stand offs on the tail lights that stopped it from sitting as deep as I wanted. In the pic below you'll see the right one has this stand off and the left one has been removed.


Both removed.


I also bought some Dynamask 5000 from Octamex in Germany. This stuff is a UV exposure dry solder mask film. I'll have to build myself a UV light box but it will really allow me to step up the quality of my boards.
I've also got some Pusler White TRF so I can make a silk screen of my own too. I really want my home made boards to look as professional as possible.

I've completed redrawing my boards to house more LEDs and also have plug and play connectors, no more jumpers.

I'm also researching microcontrollers so I can do some more interesting things with my tail lights.

Been awhile since I've updated this so...

I redrew ALL of my LED boards again. This time I crammed as many LEDs in as possible, allow me to break it all down for you.
- 264 LEDs per tail light
- 147 LEDs for the center brake tail
- That's 675 LEDs just for the brake lights!
- TALON Name Plate has 176 LEDs.
- Rear Turn Signals have 138 LEDs per side, 276 total!
- Front Headlight Turn Signals/Markers have 32 LEDs per side, 64 total!
- Front Bumper Turn Signals/Markers have 52 LEDs per side, 104 total!
- 1031 LEDs in total, that's 4124 holes I have to drill in total for soldering these things to the boards, FML!

Printing the designs to the PNP Blue.


Since my boards have sat for a while I had to clean them, bit of time with some steel wool and they are ready for the designs to be transferred.



I picked up a GBC H220 Laminator a while back and modified it to run slower. It works so much nicer then my old iron for transferring the PNP blue to the boards.


Etched and ready for drilling.


2316 holes later, yawn! My back is shot btw.
I cleaned the toner off the boards with some paint thinner, hit them with steel wool again and lastly some Isopytpol Alcohol. Then it I soaked them in MG Chemicals Liquid Tin. This stuff is the cat's ass, tins the board in about 3-5 minutes and will protect the copper from oxidizing.



From top to bottom, name plate boards, Brake light boards, headlight turn signals/markers and bumper turn signals/markers. This should keep me busy for a little bit.


I'm going to start soldering up all those boards tomorrow, I'm waiting on a shipment of resistors from Digikey.

I've finally started learning more about my MSP430 finally so I can start building my controllers for each housing.
The rear tail light controller will be interesting, it will control normal parking and brake lights plus do some sequencing for when parked. I'm think I will have a bluetooth module in it to control the 'Show' functions via my Android and maybe a display of some sort up front so I know what's going on back there.

Stay tuned!

Nice work Anthony!!
When you start working with the MSP430 would love to hear all the details, did a little research and it looks pretty interesting!

I'll share as muc as I can Bryan.
Right now I'm just reading through the quick start guide and tutorials.

Love this project of yours! Can't wait to see it all finished.

Looks awesome man. Excited for an update on this.

Thanks guys!

I've now finished a bunch of the amber boards.
Etched the center section and rear turn signal boards yesterday and started drilling them.

Hope to finish them off over the weekend.

Got an order from Digikey last week - SMD resistors and Sharp 12V VRegs (just to have more on hand since they are discontinued). The bad thing is I can't count and didn't order enough resistors so I've got another order placed now.


I did another rough design of my last tail light board, still not 100% happy with it though. I'm going to get all the other boards populated and then get them dry mounted into the housing and try this again.


Transferred my turn signal boards and trimmed/test fit them. My first board had to be left a bit bigger but other then that, no issues.


Soldering lots and lots of tiny SMD resistors. I also had to locally source some new SMD resistors for my bumper markers/turns because the ones from Digikey were too big. With these new resistors I had a small issue, they get soldered to the board vertically instead of horizontally; of course I noticed this after they were all soldered, D'OH!


Many hours later almost all the turn signals on the car are finished.



I also played around with my reverse lights. These are high power Cree XM-L LEDs powered by LuxDrive Buck Blocks at 2100mA. These will need a 20K Pot to adjust brightness as I will likely blind someone with them LOL. I'll likely mount the pot in the center console so I can adjust it if need be when backing up.


Just sitting there for now. I will figure out mounting later.


These are crazy bright, I was thinking two of them per tail light but that may be overkill. I want to test them on the car before I make any final decisions.


[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...AWD/LED%20Tails/100_0662_zps15bb5e6c.jpg[/img]

That's it for now. As I said I've got the last bunch of resistors on the way to finish the brake light boards. I also need some more PnP Blue to finish etching the last remaining brake light boards and make another one of the tail light turn signals as I mess it up when trimming.
Should have all the boards done by the end of next week.

I also have some dummy bulbs so my dome lights and rear cargo light can be simple plug and play.

Stay tuned!

Your tail light work has made me want to do the mustang sequential turn signals like in the video below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwz71eXZiJQ

^ I have one of those. There are kits you can buy just for that. The one I bought went out of business. I'm sure there are others though.

I originally wanted sequential turn signals but now I've gone off the deep end.

Finished soldering up my brake light boards. I can now temporarily mount them and draft up the 5th and final board for the tail lights.


Here's a back of the boards.


Here's a comparison to the previous version of the boards, you can see there are a lot more LEDs in the new version.



I also started working on the dome lights again, I want to run a voltage regulator to save my LEDs.
First was installing some glazing points to mount the boards too (ala azdave).


Couple seconds with my MAP torch to heat these bad boys up and then push them into the plastic.




I picked up some of the dummy bulbs off of eBay to plug into the factory bulb holder so it will be plug and play.


I still need to dye/paint the dome light housing seen in the pictures.
I also brought the center section boards back to the drawing board once again! I messed them up and had the LEDs facing the wrong way so they wouldn't light. Of course I noticed this AFTER I transferred and etched the boards, sigh.
I've also finally posted about the MSP430/TLC5940NT combo sequencer over on 43oh!

Decided to use the sequencers I have now to get my headlights 'done' and on the car. I also wanted to finish up the bumper markers. When I get my new sequencers designed and what not I can simply swap them out.

To even start messing with this I needed a new pair of strippers to strip wire smaller then 22AWG. I also needed bent nose pliers to install my push points that my boards will mount to.


I used some Easy Off Oven Cleaner to strip the chrome on the bumper markers. I then hit them with some gloss black paint.


Ribbon cable for the sequencers soldered on and the boards installed in the housings. Then lenses are just laid there, I need to get some JB Weld to seal them up.


Here you can see the push pins stuck into the headlight housing.


Sequencer board placed in.

LED board.


Lastly the lens on (the other side but you get the idea), looks OEM


Here's a couple videos too.

That's crazy bright, good work!

Cool beans!

It's getting CLOSER!!

I cannot wait for this car to be on the road. The attention to detail is inspiring

Thanks guys!

Seriously impressive.

Thanks!

A mildly boring update.

I had bought a paper cutter (Guillotine) to cut my boards. However it wasn't sharp enough so it pulled the boards further under the blade thus messing up cuts. So now I need to print the lower center section boards again. However since I fly for work tomorrow I'm not going through the process to print, etch, drill and populate another board; I will do that when I come back.

I picked up 5M of 40 way ribbon cable, I split it into 20 way and cut off multiple lengths. This will provide the ground from the 59116F LED driver on my sequencer board.


Here's the ribbon cable soldered to the tail light boards.


And the name plate boards.


The ribbon cable will plug into the sequencer boards making everything plug and play. I've also decided to place my Voltage regulators for the LEDs on the sequencer board, this way everything will be in one unit. I can then get a housing machined for the sequencer unit.

I also picked up some accelerometers (G sensor) for the sequencer. I want to measure how many Gs the car pulls under a panic brake situation. From this I can feed the info into the program so when the accelerometers sees that G force then the brakes will strobe to get the attention of other drivers.


I also picked up an HC-06 bluetooth adapter (small chip) and Blue Pak Booster pack (mounts on the MSP430 Launch Pad). I'm unsure if I will use the booster pack at all. I will make a plug and play board for the HC-06 to mount to and plug into the sequencer. This will allow me to control the extra sequencing functions via an app on my phone.


I'm working on drawing up my sequencer. When I get back home from work I will finish the center section brake light boards, hopefully I will have made some progress with the sequencer too.

Till next time.

Not a ton of updates but some good ones.
I had to modiify the tail light housings so the boards would sit further back in them and the output wouldn't be all hot spotty. I then put Glazing point in for the boards to mount on.


I then dry mounted the boards, some of them had to be sanded down a bit. I can now FINALLY draw my last board.



I also found out the ribbon cable I bought was a complete different/odd pitch so I couldn't source connectors for it. That's what I get for buying off eBay so I had to desolder everything.


I had new stuff bought but things have changed a bit.
As some people may or may not know I've been working on, rather unsuccessfully I might add, a microcontroller based controller/sequencer for my lights. It's based of Texas Instruments MSP430 uC and TLC59116F LED driver; however this is uncharted territory for me and designing and programming them is prove to be a steep learning curve. Also remember, this is me - you know I want all the cool stuff: Bluetooth control, multiple show sequences, G sensor for panic breaking, etc etc. All of which only further complicates this build.
So I've decided to abandon it for now.












































































I did stumble across these: ghoztlighting.com/product/ledsequencer/
Doesn't have all the features I want but should control all my LEDs for now. I've pulled the trigger and purchased a pair, this will allow me to control one tail light so I'll go ahead and experiment with them and see what happens. I'll post updates once I get a tail light up and running.

I've been frigging around in EagleCAD for the past couple days to finish up my power supply boards once and for all. I'm happy to say that they are finally done and sent off for manufacturing through OSHPark.
Turn Signal and Name plate boards (2 Vregs on each).
Top


Bottom


Brake Light power supplies (5 power supplies on 2 separate boards).
Top


Bottom


I've got everything I need to fab the power supplies up minus the screw clamps for the inputs/outputs so I will order up those and a couple things I need for the Ghozt sequencers.
For now I'm in a holding pattern, gotta love the waiting game.