[ds968]

Fun day:

Trevor and Arash came by Saturday, helped dismantle my dashboard ( well, truth be known, Trevor did 80% of the disassembly and reassembly work, and the two of them performed 100% of the LED repair - I contributed 10% to the whole job, but that's the extent of my mechanical capabilities anyway, so kinda' par for the course [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif[/img] ) and then "we" fixed a dying LED bulb which made 1/3 segment of my instrument panel unevenly dim.

While at it "we" also replaced the old steering wheel with the new one ( same type, I did not convert to CS or another wheel - just installed the one I bought recently which was in a lot nicer condition ).

Then to celebrate what is now a superb looking clear. crisp VDO we went for lunch at a nearby mexican restaurant and as coincidence would have it Sean who happened to be just ten minutes away from us that day, joined in for a hearty, fun car conversation. Damn, doesn't get much better than
968 get togethers like this ! [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif[/img]

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[xrad]

LED's for guage lighting? ...were these aftermarket?

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[SILVY968]

<!--quoteo(post=67202:date=Feb 16 2009, 06:25 PM:name=xrad)-->QUOTE (xrad @ Feb 16 2009, 06:25 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->LED's for guage lighting? ...were these aftermarket?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes.
Always on ebay. Too dim for me. dimmer does not work on LEDS; on or off.
Item number: 270344044723
Brian

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[ds968]

<!--quoteo(post=67202:date=Feb 16 2009, 06:25 PM:name=xrad)-->QUOTE (xrad @ Feb 16 2009, 06:25 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->LED's for guage lighting? ...were these aftermarket?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->


got mine from Jager Engineering - Garage 9

the OEM dimmer only works to reduce the brightness of the LEDs by about 20%

actually the blue ones are pretty bright ( just perfect for my taste ) , I heard the reds for some reason or another [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/huh.gif[/img] are less so

I tried to take a photo but no matter what lighting or lack thereof, no mater what distance I use, no matter what camera I use, the photo does not even come close to reproducing the real illumination - it enhances it by about 1000% , so it looks like I took a photo of Las Vegas' night skyline from a foot away

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[SILVY968]

Here is shot of the red LEDS. full bright.
Brian
   

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[xrad]

nice Brian...

Regarding LED dimmers: there is a dimmer circuit available for LEDs, need PWM or insulated gate transistors to modulate pulse width while being isolated from the control. You could probably use the original pot to run the resistance side of the modulating /power chip (I think you can now find combined modulator and power chips for 12 volt...all the car show stuff). As long as the pot resistance works with the chip, you could use it to power your LEDs...but then you would also want to have control of the other incan lights, so you would really need a separate control for the LED's......

Here is what you need to control the LEDs....

http://www.amazon.com/Universal-2-Channel-...t/dp/B001ES64MK

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[ds968]

ok, I tried one more camera.. here are a couple of shots ; one is at full bright, the other is with the OEM dimmer at the lowest setting ( as I said before, my guess is only about a 20% effect on dimming )

important thing to remember again, is the photos are much brighter than the real life appearance ..and because of the light reflection, it also may be a bit fuzzy with difusion all over the screen, but in reality, the panel , numbers etc are very sharp / crisp.

       

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[biotechee]

Just a little too bright for me. I prefer to keep my interior dash lighting darker so as to not take away from my exterior vision. One thing I have found, my daily driver Jetta's red dash lighting is less intrusive than other cars I have driven (like my wife's pilot- that thing looks like an arcade game!).

I find that brighter dash lights cause a little bit of a delay in my eye adjusting when I look up to the oncoming road. If I can keep the dash lights a tad darker, my eyes adjust more quickly to the exterior light levels.

Just my $0.02.

A great mod nonetheless!

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[Anchorman]

Is there anything preventing this conversion from being done with red LEDs?

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[flash]

bio - you are dead on - lots of very big studies on this

bright light bad - dim light better - red light (low wavelength) better than blue light (higher wavelength)

anchor - nothing stopping red - dan just likes blue

i'm still working on finding a conversion that gives me what i want - so far, nada - it's either not bright enough, too bright, or an uneven light - i only want the gauges lit, and not the whole pod - i also want full dimmer control - figuring out that combination has been a real challenge

i haven't tried everything yet, but the cluster is coming out again tomorrow, so i'll get a chance to play around some more

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[DiREW0LF]

Flash, found this circuit you can use. Assuming our dimmer switch is just a potentiometer


http://www.mikesflightdeck.com/led_dimmer.htm


The other option might be to make a circuit that turns on more LEDs as voltage increases, but that would require an IC and a lot more work. And might take a lot of fiddling with LED positioning to get the light even

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[DiREW0LF]

Here is one thats interesting as well. Pulses the LED's and the duty cycle determines the brightness...

http://www.reuk.co.uk/LED-Dimmer-Circuit.htm


Does anyone have a schematic for the Jager Eng. LED setup? Maybe I (we) can design something that can be used with the Jager upgrade that will allow full range dimming.

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[ds968]

<!--quoteo(post=67449:date=Feb 20 2009, 09:10 AM:name=flash)-->QUOTE (flash @ Feb 20 2009, 09:10 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->dan just likes blue<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

if I ever put my car on sale, there'll be a two mile long line of smurfs camping overnight for a chance at this baby.. [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif[/img]

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