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I was at Radio Shack today and picked up some red and green LEDs to make nav lights for my boat project. The only ready made ones I could find were around $40 and I'm too cheap to pay that. And I also wanted to fool around with wiring up some LEDs since I've never done it before:smile2:
The housing is a plastic cap off of the wife's laundry detergent. I just drilled 3/16 holes and pushed the lights through. They fit nice and snug. The calculation for the resistor for the 5 lamps called for a 68 ohm resistor, but with Radio Shack's limited selection 100 ohm was the closest I could get. The lights won't be quite as bright but should give me a little more protection from voltage spikes:wink:
All the connections were soldered as you can see in the pics and I'll mix up a tablespoon or so of fiberglass resin and fill the back to seal it up and make it stronger. I've checked the lights and they lit up fine. I'll hold off on the red marker for the other side till SkipEye posts up and lets me know what I did wrong on this one so I can fix it on the other side:smile2:
The housing is a plastic cap off of the wife's laundry detergent. I just drilled 3/16 holes and pushed the lights through. They fit nice and snug. The calculation for the resistor for the 5 lamps called for a 68 ohm resistor, but with Radio Shack's limited selection 100 ohm was the closest I could get. The lights won't be quite as bright but should give me a little more protection from voltage spikes:wink:
All the connections were soldered as you can see in the pics and I'll mix up a tablespoon or so of fiberglass resin and fill the back to seal it up and make it stronger. I've checked the lights and they lit up fine. I'll hold off on the red marker for the other side till SkipEye posts up and lets me know what I did wrong on this one so I can fix it on the other side:smile2:

