Fitting Flashing LEDs to road vehicles.

[Waverley47708]

I ve fitted flashing pre wired SMD LEDs to an ambulance and police car.  

 

I'm OK with it but needs tidying up with a switch rather than training wires just now.

 

I have a couple of Bedford fire engines one with transparent blue lights on the roof the other non transparent roof lights.  I've ordered replacement lights but not sure how people fit SMDs to illuminate the roof lights. 

 

Would be interested to see how others have SMD LEDs to the Bedford fire engines and small switches in general to road vehicles.

 

I have opted for button batteries rather than hard wiring them so I can move them around the layout.

 

 

 

Edited May 12, 2021 by Waverley47708

[otherplanet]

I used these switches in my radio control vehicles. Search 'micro slide switch' on your online auction site of choice. There is a wide range.

Just be careful when glueing them in. It's quite easy to glue them solid, especially if you use low viscosity super glue.

 

I've also used SMD LEDs, after carefully soldering wires onto tiny pieces of LED dust for many vehicles, I then started buying pre wired versions (same online auction site) it's just not worth the hassle.

The wires are super thin and you can then just glue them where you need.

Make sure you buy the right colour white for your era. You need warm white unless you are modelling  modern image.

I always add high value resistors, up to 10k Ohm, to adjust the intensity of light to a more realistic level.

 

Finally, have you seen the rotating beacons that are available? I've never tried them, but they look so much better for the old style rotating mirror type lights.

[Waverley47708]

Thanks for that I'll look out for the switches.

 

Yes same experience with SMDs now go for the prewired version.

 

It is the Bedford TK fire engine I'm struggling with.  The blue lights on the roof are very small.  The replacement I bought look OK size wise in the packet, but are much bigger than the originals.  I have carefully drilled them out to accommodate an SMD.  An SMD would be too big for the originals.  Not sure just attaching them to underneath would allow them to shine through.  Anyway one of my fire engines has solid lights anyway.

 

Rotating beacons, sounds interesting.  Any details?

Edited May 13, 2021 by Waverley47708

[Pillar]

I've also been fitting lights to some of my road vehicles; details here: https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/161772-pillars-road-vehicles-north-east-england-1970s-1990s-loosely/page/2/#comments

 

I use SMD LEDs (0805 or 0603) and mount them to copperclad board which I score to make a crude 'PCB'. Soldering them to copperclad yourself is much easier than soldering to wires; just clean and tin the surfaces and make sure you use a low sodlering iron temperature such as 270C. Higher temperatures are more likely to damage the LEDs, and old fashioned leaded solder has an advantage here with its lower melting point.

 

I'm so glad you've pointed out that SMD LEDs with built in flashing circuits are available. For some reason I never considered this, and spent ages building a DIY flashing circuit for the indicators on a kitbuilt bus. The circuit itself is very simple, but hand-cutting all the traces into a tiny scrap of copperclad was pretty time consuming. Now I can avoid this in future!

 

I'd also be interested to hear about the rotating beacon lights. I know some DCC sound decoders have a flashing mode which is meant to mimic these and it looks very convincing.

 

Cheers,

 

Liam

 

Edited May 14, 2021 by Pillar

[Waverley47708]

22 hours ago, Pillar said:

I've also been fitting lights to some of my road vehicles; details here: https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/161772-pillars-road-vehicles-north-east-england-1970s-1990s-loosely/page/2/#comments

 

I use SMD LEDs (0805 or 0603) and mount them to copperclad board which I score to make a crude 'PCB'. Soldering them to copperclad yourself is much easier than soldering to wires; just clean and tin the surfaces and make sure you use a low sodlering iron temperature such as 270C. Higher temperatures are more likely to damage the LEDs, and old fashioned leaded solder has an advantage here with its lower melting point.

 

I'm so glad you've pointed out that SMD LEDs with built in flashing circuits are available. For some reason I never considered this, and spent ages building a DIY flashing circuit for the indicators on a kitbuilt bus. The circuit itself is very simple, but hand-cutting all the traces into a tiny scrap of copperclad was pretty time consuming. Now I can avoid this in future!

 

I'd also be interested to hear about the rotating beacon lights. I know some DCC sound decoders have a flashing mode which is meant to mimic these and it looks very convincing.

 

Cheers,

 

Liam

 

Some great modelling there on your thread which I had seen before.

 

Years ago I bought flashing SMDs and wire.  I can solder but I struggled with those.  I was delighted to fit the prewired.  There are not many suppliers and I got a batch last month, two didnt work from the start, one stopped with just a little handling. 

 

The second batch from a different supplier on ebay have been far more robust.

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/114374682174

 

 

[Pikey]

I've only found suppliers in Holland for the rotating LED beacons so far, and they're not cheap - the beacon and the chip to control it I think came to about £25 including postage (!) but they do look very good.

[Pikey]

 

[Pillar]

That does look good! I was expecting just a single LED that was blinked/faded in a particular way, but that appears to be using multiple LEDs illuminated in sequence.

[Pikey]

Yes, its three LEDS in the beacon, which are operated in sequence by a tiny chip.

[Waverley47708]

Before and after.

 

T Cut to remove the Met Police crest and orange stripe on the drivers door.

 

Kingfisher models Police Transfers for the stripe and lettering, Lothian and Borders Police crest from Ebay.

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/4-X-Lothian-Border-POLICE-WATERSLIDE-DECAL-IDEAL-FOR-CODE-3-MODELS-/333128907014

 

Lights bar and SMD LEDS connected to a 3v button battery inside.

Edited May 30, 2021 by Waverley47708

[DGO]

On 19/05/2021 at 13:58, Pikey said:

Yes, its three LEDS in the beacon, which are operated in sequence by a tiny chip.

Is this an off the shelf setup or something you have created yourself ? I need to create something similar on top of a snowblower 

 

David

[Les Bird]

The Kytes Lights site is worth a look. They do quite a range of items including lights for emergency vehicles. As an aside, their zebra crossing is excellent

t

[Mike Harvey]

This site has a long list of different light effects with videos and instructions. N8042 looks suitable.

 

https://www.ngineering.com/lghting effects for the railroad.htm

[Pikey]

On 22/07/2021 at 08:53, DGO said:

Is this an off the shelf setup or something you have created yourself ? I need to create something similar on top of a snowblower 

 

David

 

https://teknikart.eu/en/290-miniatuura-p10044.html

 

and

 

https://teknikart.eu/en/291-dccar-dip8-l6.html

 

 

[DGO]

11 hours ago, Pikey said:

 

https://teknikart.eu/en/290-miniatuura-p10044.html

 

and

 

https://teknikart.eu/en/291-dccar-dip8-l6.html

 

 

 

Great thanks, a lot of the beacon sequencers only talk about a single beacon and I need two to go on top of my snowblower so thats really helpful 

[Paul_C]

Does anyone know of any jewelled blue grille flashers and red rear flashers for fire engines please, 1/76 scale.

 

Paul.

[Mike Harvey]

@Paul_C       Search Ebay or Hobbycraft for Diamante Crafts or jewels. Various circular colours and sizes available.

 

Ebay item 141173861107 is an example for 1mm size.

 

 

[Paul_C]

Thanks Mike, I'll give that a go.