$15 Getaway LED toppers Flasher w/ video and pictures!

[good_buddy83]

I'm working on a friends machine and he does not have the ceiling height in his basement to support a big red revolving dome on the top of his getaway. I already told him to get a bigger basement, but short of that, I'm replacing the big Dome with some small low profile LED flashers in blue and red. These new lights run at 12VDC. Looks like the dome was running at 20VAC (I metered it at about 17VAC). Anyway, the two don't match. Just wondering what other have done to make this work. I thought about setting up a small board with a bridge and a voltage divider to get the switched 12VDC required, but that adds a 3rd board for this whole set-up and that seems like overkill. I know the Aux board to run the original was powered by 22.5VDC, a ground wire and CPU wire at +1V (to turn the triac on and off). Anyway, should I use these 3 wires and transistor and a voltage divider to pitch the other boards? I know this is a common mod, but I don't know how others have run it. Let me know your thoughts.

Also if anyone is curious, DHGate sells a nice flasher unit for about 15bucks shipped to your door taxes all in. It is small but should get the job done, just need to get it that switched 12VDC. Let me know your thoughts, as I saw on line some guy tied these direct to the AC and it looked like it worked, but I don't trust the internet, so thought and opinions are appreciated.

 

[Menace]

Re: Getaway LED toppers tie in 12VDC?

Sounds like your plan of using a transistor, voltage divider would work just fine.

D

 

[good_buddy83]

Re: Getaway LED toppers tie in 12VDC?

So I hooked this up and tied directly into the 17VAC that the old motor worked off of and everything seems to work fine. I even let it flash for an hour and nothing appeared to heat up. I know this isn't the right way to do it, but it seems to work fine. I'll post some pictures and some details later today, as I think it is a nice little mod. I'll also try to post a quick video if I can.

So my best guess is since the LED's are diodes by nature, perhaps the 60hz oscilations are fast enough that I don't notice and delays. Anyway if someone can explain it better I would appreciate it. Like I say, my gut says this shouldn't have worked, but it appears like is does and works safely. I'll keep you posted.

 

[good_buddy83]

Re: Getaway LED toppers tie in 12VDC?

 

[good_buddy83]

Re: Getaway LED toppers Flasher alternative

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o5Xf64HMJ0[/youtube]

 

[good_buddy83]

Re: Getaway LED toppers Flasher alternative

So these flashers were $15 taxes, shipping all in to my door from DH Gate.

http://www.dhgate.com/red-blue-4x3-led- ... 24597.html

Tied directly into the board that the old lights used to be tied into. The only minor hicup is that these lights only come on when one of the 3 buttons is pushed on the controller box. So I opened the box and soldered a jumper wire over the button that I wanted to use all the time. I thought it came out pretty well myself. If I had to do it again, I might add a few more lights, but I find this subtle yet bright. Nice effect overall.