LED help?

[Wiz13688]

Looking for any ready made control board for Blinking/spinning/pulsing LED. Thanks in advance.

[neptunesurvey]

Madman Lighting covers the full spectrum of lighting starships.

[Jefuemon]

I've used these guys before with great success, and I know nothing about wiring.

[grapetang]

Madman Lighting looks interesting but frak that's expensive!!! Looks like a they could use some competition!

Since you're looking for ready-made, you could always browse the dollar stores or the thrift aisles of Target/Michaels/etc. for cheap electronic toys to scavenge. You would have more options if you opt to do-it-yourself: Radio Shack has self-blinking LEDs and there are more alternatives.

Good luck!

[Wiz13688]

Yea, I've seen the Madman kit before but was just wondering if there's any other alternative that is user programmable so I can use it on other kits as well. Thanks all.

Edited July 8, 2014 by Wiz13688

[MechTech]

Programmable is expensive! Radio Shack has programmable circuits, but overkill for this. Like Grapetang said, look for toys AND ornaments! I have the 1/350th Space Battleship Yamato kit, but wanted to emulate the tachion particles glinting around the barrel. Of course the kit comes with lighting, but they missed that part. So I plan to drill micro holes and insert fiber optics into it.

So where to get the lighting? After going through several stores and looking at all sorts of toys, games and stuff, I found a Tinker Bell ornament with lights and sounds. I removed the speaker and the lighting has several LEDs that fade and dance in random sequence. They are white so I'm adding a color filter from busted up tailight lens.

Keep in mind that a lot of things that have random blinking lights are actually blinking them in order (like for landing bay guide lights). The LEDs just have to be pulled and re-arrnaged in order of flashing. Hope that helps! - MT