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So awesome! Thank you for sharing with us and also for posting on social media. :-) Keep up the great work. FYI we have some new lightbar and EMS lighting options coming soon, so if you're working on a rig and want a custom setup, drop us an e-mail through our website!
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Rob Klingberg Sure thing! I do want a full lighting system on both of them (as in the lightbar in the front, all the lights on the box and maybe head/taillights) at some point, but not sure how to do it in a cost effective, efficient, and well cable managed way without modifying the bricks at all. I will keep that in mind, Thank you very much!
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Josh You bet. Yes, modifying the bricks is the challenge. We're planning a lighting system for vehicles that will only require modded bricks in the lightbars. Lights should fit pretty much everywhere else without the need for mods. I will be doing several demo videos using EMS vehicles from BrickDesigners when the system is ready!
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Rob Klingberg Update to this, instead of modification of bricks, I have been 3D printing my own bricks with built in LED mounting holes and wire channels. It is very effective. My first one was a black 1x4 all blue lightbar (pictures), the second a silver 1x5 R/B lightbar(video).
I recently saw the new lightbar post, and I will definitely consider get one or two to test out if they are not too expensive.
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Josh Nice work! That's very similar to how our gen1 lightbars were built. The drawback for us, when making them at scale, was all the wires and the manual hand-soldering. With the new versions (I'll post a photo in the other thread), we're moving to three wires per lightbar to control up to 9 full-color LEDs.
The effect controllers we're building will also have onboard sound + remote control, and we're working on a rechargeable LiPo option for people so they can charge from a USB plug on the bottom of their vehicles.
I know I've been talking about this system for a LONG time, but the good thing is we're finally getting close. The new controllers use the newest Atmel chips which have tons more memory than the older 84's/85's, so in theory one controller should be able to run 50 or more RGB LEDs from a single spot.
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Rob Klingberg Thank you! The soldering was definitely the worst part about these. I used adafruit's trinket boards so that definitely cut-out the difficulty of designing my own PCB (which, funny enough I started researching and learning how to do anyway). Your projects have been rather inspiring to me, definitely can't wait to see some demo videos of the new lightbars/FX boards in action!
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Josh Thanks, I'm 100% self-taught on PCB design myself-- I use KiCad and taught myself over a vacation at Christmas in 2018 by watching YouTube for like 12 hours non-stop. Thank goodness for YouTube!
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Rob Klingberg I have been trying out a few programs, haven't tried KiCad yet, I will have to change that! So far I have made 3 boards digitally, and who knows, I may get one of the designs made at some point, see how I did.
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Josh KiCad was the easiest of the apps I tried. For years I tried to learn Eagle and even Altium, but KiCad turned out to be so much more intuitive for me. I can't remember for sure, but I think these might have been the tutorials I watched: https://youtu.be/zESNgh9TAQw. There are 7 videos.
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Rob Klingberg Good to know, thank you for the videos! I will take a look at them. It is very cool that KiCad supports Linux, which I run on one of my computers.
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Josh Yeah overall it's a great product with a large base of community support.