tourist

Mine aren't running too hot. We'll see after the project is completed if I need the led brighter. Finally got the circuit board done and tested. After a couple of days and countless tries finally got the traces to transfer to copper. Drilled holes, mounted stuff. Just looking around the house for hook up wires.

Heres the led board. The lens was my first attempt, wrong color.

Heres the circuit board for now. Don't know if I can make those tiny traces. The board is actually 2" by 1 5/8".

I did try. Even with the colored lens I am satisfied. They should put a warning on every led to remind you not to look directly at them.

Here is what I built and tested and included some real voltages and currents. I'm thinking this is the final version and going to start on the circuit board design. audioguru, Thanks for your help, I hope I interpreted correctly.

I'm thinking it may be bright enough. Hard to actually tell from picture but it does look good so far. The leds are from that display. I think they are 3mm high flux. (http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-bin/store/index.cgi?action=DispPage&Page2Disp=%2Fspecs%2Fhf3-y5570.htm) It has a 12vdc and 330 ohm resistors. While they are not orange, they are close in color to the orange on the bike. I have similar red leds (not the one I'm testing with in the picture).

This is going on a BMW motorcycle. I could be wrong but it is my understanding that the "computer" controls these lights and monitors over current and under current conditions. I have seen an extra 20 milliamps drawn when somebody used a relay in the circuit for their lights. Don't know if it caused any problems after that first day. I just know if I took my voltmeter and monitor the lights it doesn't upset the system. I thought it would be safer to use the op amp and transistor. I am not 100% sure what would happen if I try to draw that much current from the turn signal side. I am not sure if anybody knows the truth so I just tried to keep consistent with the circuit. I have built an array of infrared leds that had 5 in series with a resistor but it seemed to have a cascading effect of taking out the other strings of led. Maybe my poor design so I again I opted for consistency. Is it a better design, more efficient to string multiple leds? I salvaged a sign with a bunch of leds that lit up at the same time and each one had its own resistor so I copied. I'm still not set on the amount of leds. I see some units that have 50 LEDs in just one disc. The next step is to test this with the lens cover I made to make sure it is bright enough for me.

Got rid of the Vcc/2b. Changed Vcc/2a resistors. I put the pull down resistors on pins 3 and 5 for the turn signal side. I think I still need to use an op amp and transistor because of the total current draw from LEDs (7-10). Correct me if I'm wrong, I may not have mentioned the quantity of LEDs. The brake side I didn't add the pull down resistors because the input will either 2.4vdc or 13.8vdc. Didn't think they were needed because there is voltage there in the operating state. I still need to choose the LEDs that I'm going to use so I don't know if the current limit resistors are the correct size. Am I missing something or does it look adequate?

I think its getting there. I'll fix the leds symbols in the next circuit diagram. Are the 1k resistors on the base needed or should they be a different value? Are the 1k resistors on pins 3,5,10 and 12 needed or of a different value? I drew them in there because I saw them in similar circuits. I reversed the vcc/2a and /2b resistors because on the turn signal portion I didn't want output until a higher voltage. Would higher value resistors be better? Should I or do I need to add some pull down resistors to pins 3,5? Since these are extra lights on the side bags. When I remove the bags the leds will no longer be in the circuit. Do I need to add anything to the circuit for when the leds are removed?

Well, I thought about that. Got a CA324E that I tried but didn't get any output. So I went out and bought the lm324 just in case my ic was bad. The new 324 didn't work either. This is the circuit, for the most part. Now I only hooked up one op amp from the package and left the other pins open. Will that make a difference?

So, is there a better op amp to use? I thought since there were four different inputs, left turn, right turn, left brake light and right brake light I could use a quad op amp package in the circuit instead of the 741 but I'm still just seeing if it can work. If there is a better suggestion I can try it but these are simply the components that I have at my disposal to test with. So if the design is ok than I can move on but I don't think that I'm there. A goal is to have this fit on a 1.5" by 2" circuit board and there is not alot of room where the circuit will be mounted.

I need to build a circuit to detect when the brake lights are on and the turn signals on. The brake light and tail light are the same bulb. The tail light uses 2.4 volts then when the brake is applied the voltage increases to 13.8 volts. This circuit seems to work on my test board. When the input is 2.4vdc the leds are on at about half the brightness and when the brake would be applied and the input is 13.8 volts the leds are on full. The input only has two values: 2.4vdc and 13.8vdc. These components are just what I had lying around and I think I would use a different op amp in the final circuit because I will need to monitor 4 different lights, (2 brake and 2 turn signals) The turn signal circuit differs by reversing the 10k and the 100k resistors. The turn signals input is either 0v or 13.8 vdc. I read out here that the 741 isn't good to use in automotive applications, idk. I'm open to better components or design but I can't draw too much current from the light circuit because it is monitored in some fashion by the onboard computer. Any help would be appreciated Thanks.