Alternate Flashing LED's
 

OK, I have seen a lot of post on here about flashing LED's for police & fire vehicles. Keep in mind I am definitely not an expert in electronics! I searched for some circuitry on alternate flashing LED's and came up with the following:

2 - 470 Ohm, 5% Tolerance resistors
2 - 39K Ohm, 5% Tolerance resistors
2 - 10uF / 16V Capacitors
2 - Transistors (Radio Shack #2N3904)
2 - LED's (you pick the color)

When properly assembled, these components will make alternate flashing LED's and are quite impressive in an X-MOD. The attached pic shows both lights on but they do alternate and look x-tremely cool!

I have a few pictures of the wiring of the components but do not have the photos of them in my RSX yet.

If anyone is interested I will find the link to the website again and post it.

Good luck with your MODS!
:bled:
http://home.kc.rr.com/stormvet/X-MOD%20Lights%20006.jpg

wow, that circuitry looks quite simple. ph2t has been working on one (dunno the status of it now) and he was using an OP-AMP to generate a square wave to make it flash. coudl you post teh schematic or the link to the site with the schematic? how fast does it flash>

I will search for the schematic and post it today. The LED's on my RSX flash at a rate of about 1 cycle per second (this rate is determined by the 39K Ohm resistors and can be changed easily).

Here are some pics of the LEDs in my RSX (Not a lot of mods yet).

http://home.kc.rr.com/stormvet/P7030031.JPG
http://home.kc.rr.com/stormvet/P7030032.JPG
http://home.kc.rr.com/stormvet/P7030033.JPG

Here's the schematic
 

I found the schematic again. It came from this websit:
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~antoon/circ/flash2.htm

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~antoon/circ/flash2.gif

i wonder how hard it would be to add a 3rd led into that and make it flash aside from the rest of them. you know like have a random flashing patern for 3 leds.

Flashing Lights INdeed
 

That is a great pic of how you wired it up, but how do you do it? Is possible to get a step by step guide on how to wire this up and what differences the different capacitors and resistors make? Thanks.

I'm going to be doing another one for a buddy so I will take step by step notes and photos when I do it.

Should be pretty soon (within the next week).

Thanks!

quick question... do the led's simply alternate left, right, left, right? or is there a point where they are both on before one turns off?

the transistors act like on/off switches and from what i can tell, they won't turn on together

They alternate left and right. They are never really "ON" together. There may be a little bit of bleed over while the light is going away (hence the picture where they look like they are both on) but they are not.

I hope this helps.

Are you supposed to use 39Kohm or 3.9Kohm resistors. Because at Radioshack all they had were 3.9Kohm resistors.

Edit: also, how do you power the lights? Do you somehow hook them up to the car battery? Pics would be appreciated.

You might need to check a couple of different Radio Shacks. The resistors are supposed to be 39K Ohm. I ended up using 33K Ohm resistors because the RS I went to did not have the 39K except for in an assortment pack for $11.99

As for the power... I hooked it up to the power leads coming up to the motor plug and it worked as follows:

on High Trim the lights would alt flash as they are supposed to. The lower setting made the lights flash much faster (almost strobe). This is the reason that I am working on an alternate power source. I originally configured this for a 9V circuit but there is no room under the body for a 9V. The obvious would be to reduce resistors to allow for less voltage (6V) but I want to ensure that there will not be a change in the flash rate from high to low trim. Therefore; I am still searching for an additional power source (aside from the battery pack of the XMod).

I hope this information is helpful.

WOW! im going to have to do this now. Since the skyline has the 2 different lights in the back (backup lights) it would be really cool to have two of them! Maybe even a backup light that works when you backup? hmmm a project bc?

alternate power source
 

for an alternate power source u could use two 3v watch batteries(panasonic cr2016), i took apart a LED keychain that was really bright and that is what powered that. it gives you 6v of power, but takes up less than .5 cm of space.

one of those shoudl be fine, 6 volts kills some led's