Night out on the Modular Street

[Taheen]

In anticipation of the next addition to the street at the end of this month I thought I'd do a little modifying and wake up my street a little bit.

The pictures can do the talking.

Daylight

Nightlife

[lightningtiger]

AWESOME !!!

Just simply awesome - now you are making me want to try the light my streets of New Mannum !

Great work 'Taheen' and I'm a conformist! !

[The Player Nº1]

Awesome!

The leds are produced by LEGO?

Thanks

Regards

Edited February 17, 2010 by The Player Nº1

[efin]

Now that is really slick! :thumbup:

[Taheen]

Awesome!

The leds are produced by LEGO?

Thanks

Regards

No, they are run off the rechargeable PF battery but they are not the LEGO brand lights. I do have a set... well I did anyway before I cannibalized them for their connector. The Lego lights are extremely dim and really have nowhere near enough output. I had thought about doing Lifelites but thought I'd have a crack at it myself.

In the end I used 3mm flat-top LEDs, flat to give them a 180 degree angle. One in each lamp and two in each floor of each building. They fit perfectly into on which I placed clear cheese slopes for the bottom floors and orange slopes for the living quarters for a warmer feel.

As for the HOTEL sign, I had to re-design it slightly to have the E and L face the opposite direction. The way I have it displayed I wanted the sign flipped so it is forwards for the way it's seen most of the time. The LED's on this were surface mount for circuitboards, they were glued on and wired in parallel as shown in following picture. The white 1x that covers these was hollowed out to give room and glued in place. That's the only glue used in the project aside from gluing the 3mm leds into bricks.

[The Player Nº1]

No, they are run off the rechargeable PF battery but they are not the LEGO brand lights. I do have a set... well I did anyway before I cannibalized them for their connector. The Lego lights are extremely dim and really have nowhere near enough output. I had thought about doing Lifelites but thought I'd have a crack at it myself.

In the end I used 3mm flat-top LEDs, flat to give them a 180 degree angle. One in each lamp and two in each floor of each building. They fit perfectly into on which I placed clear cheese slopes for the bottom floors and orange slopes for the living quarters for a warmer feel.

As for the HOTEL sign, I had to re-design it slightly to have the E and L face the opposite direction. The way I have it displayed I wanted the sign flipped so it is forwards for the way it's seen most of the time. The LED's on this were surface mount for circuitboards, they were glued on and wired in parallel as shown in following picture. The white 1x that covers these was hollowed out to give room and glued in place. That's the only glue used in the project aside from gluing the 3mm leds into bricks.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v23/Bers...ds/IMAG0056.jpg

Thanks for the reply.

Regards

[prateek]

Nice! I really like that HOTEL sign

[BlueBard]

Excellent! It looks wonderful, you really knew where to place those leds :thumbup:

[Fugazi]

This is truly great, and thanks for the technical explanations! Sorry for the newbie questions to follow, I haven't touched to electronic stuff in a long while. How did you connect your LEDs to the battery pack, and do you feel that you could run many more lights from a single battery pack before it starts feeling the strain -- ie. glowing dimmer or something?

[Johan J]

Beautiful.

[Staszek]

Very nice street. It makes mine look pretty dark

It looks like lights are a theme of the day! See for reference reply by Patrick in Train Tech, where he shows some technical details of lights in his train layout

http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?...15&start=15 - last post on this page

[Fugazi]

Very nice street. It makes mine look pretty dark

It looks like lights are a theme of the day! See for reference reply by Patrick in Train Tech, where he shows some technical details of lights in his train layout

<a href="http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=6422&st=15&start=15" target="_blank">http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?...15&start=15 </a> - last post on this page

Thanks for the link, and I also just found this useful post about LED lighting in the General forum. This is certainly inspiration for my future layout!

[booga-b]

wow awesome lighting on the hotel sign! keep it up.......

[Holodoc]

Very well done!

This is one of the reasons I don't agree to the purists, taking only original Lego parts for their MOCs.

If I only had more understanding about electrics...

[j3tang]

after you insert the LED into the clear round brick, does the wire come down through the lamp post? that would mean you had to drill a hole at the top of the white lamp post piece as it isn't straight through?

[Taheen]

after you insert the LED into the clear round brick, does the wire come down through the lamp post? that would mean you had to drill a hole at the top of the white lamp post piece as it isn't straight through?

I will try and get a pic later, but yes the lamp posts are all drilled clean through. Wires are run inside the lamps and under the grey plates and above the baseplates, no wires visable.

[j3tang]

I will try and get a pic later, but yes the lamp posts are all drilled clean through. Wires are run inside the lamps and under the grey plates and above the baseplates, no wires visable.

that would be awesome :)

would love to find out how you've hidden away the wires!

[Taheen]

that would be awesome :)

would love to find out how you've hidden away the wires!

I didn't take many pictures during building unfortunately. The lamp posts were drilled out 1/8" with a drill press, went pretty easy. From there the 3mm leds were wired and slipped in from the top and nested right onto the stud, no modifications needed to the clear globes.

As for running the wires I sliced off a sliver of plastic on the underside of the tiles and ran the wires in that channel. All hidden, all flush.

[Col. Brik]

Cool lighting effects, well done!

[Brickadier General]

Very nice work. As long as you plan on keeping them together, then there is no harm in "cannibalizing" parts. That's my philosophy anyway. I just wish I knew how to do this kind of stuff myself.