VU Meter LED backlight voltage help...

[tomzarbo]

Thank you guys...

I'm going to revisit this this weekend if I can find some time, crazy busy lately.

I'm looking forward to getting this part of the build working, I think the rest will be fairly straightforward.
Just need to decide too weather to have a built-in power supply, or do the power brick thing and make life easier. I'm leaning towards easier, but I do have a few decent inboard PS units that would work well. It just makes me a little nervous to have 120V floating around inside something I'VE built. : )

TomZ

[AEIOU]

A long time ago, I installed a blinking red LED in a car (12 VDC). Anyway, I connected the LED to a wire wound rheostat of a few thousand Ohms, I dialed in the amount of resistance until the LED brightness was where I liked it. I then measured the adjusted resistance and used a fixed resistor of that same value. Easy-peasy.

[DrewsBrews]

Power supplies fail eventually and they don't tend to go quietly. An outboard brick might make a problem easier to catch before the flames come.

[tomzarbo]

So I received some various values of 1 watt resistors from PE and it looks like a 470 + a 100 ohm resistor in series cuts the light to a decent level, and still stays cool to the touch. I think I'm good there. Now I just have to figure out the rest of the doo-dads and get them to talk to each other, I'm having more noise issues, I may just end up using the amp built into the car radio. More to come...

TomZ

[3rutu5]

Oh very cool, looks like you and I are in a race to build a ghetto blaster by the end of the year

Are you going to post a build log for this?

[tomzarbo]

Oh very cool, looks like you and I are in a race to build a ghetto blaster by the end of the year

Are you going to post a build log for this?

I will probably post some pictures, and some of the details, but since it's pretty non-standard and nobody will ever duplicate it, I don't think I'll go too crazy with it.
And I'm pretty sure you'll win this race.

TomZ

[3rutu5]

I will probably post some pictures, and some of the details, but since it's pretty non-standard and nobody will ever duplicate it, I don't think I'll go too crazy with it.
And I'm pretty sure you'll win this race.

TomZ

Haha don't let that stand in your way, I doubt anyone wants to recreate any of my random creations