This weekend 's project was to take apart my KH250 build and add LED strips on the front and bac...

[G+_Steve Prior]

This weekend's project was to take apart my KH250 build and add LED strips on the front and back edges to help with orientation, especially at dusk.  I bought 5M of waterproof green and red 12V LED strip from a place on eBay.  At least for now the LEDs are wired directly into the power distribution board so they light as soon as the battery is plugged in and are not under any control.  I put them on the edge of the arms, not the bottom, this is because at a distance I've found it's still confusing if you can see both colored lights at the same time, having them on edge maximizes the chance that I'll ONLY see one of the colors.

 

This involved disassembling the cage, removing the Flip and power distribution board, making two sets of pigtails and soldering them to the board.  I also clipped the cable ties on the arms and moved the ESC wires so they were not on the front and back facing edges of the arms.  Then I clipped 2 sections of LED strip and soldered 22 gauge wire between them and then on one end terminating in a bullet connector to plug into the new spots on the power distribution board.

 

I only ended up doing the green side today, wanted to get the quad back together and flying to show someone.  I should be able to do the red side soon without taking everything apart again.

 

I bought a receiver controlled switch and I may eventually wire that in, but since I have telemetry I don't really need the lights as a signal, so there's not a big reason to control them.

[G+_Tracy Biddle]

Hooking the lights directly to the power distribution board would mean that you can only run a 3s battery. If you hooked up a 4s battery I think you would burn out your LEDs because your power distribution would have about 16.8 volts with a fully charged battery. Is that not correct?

[G+_Steve Prior]

Technically correct, but maybe not in practice.  First, since I ended up buying 5M of each I've got a lifetime of spares.  But I also noticed that LED units sold for this specific purpose seemed to have a 2 position jumper, one for 1 or 2S batteries and the other position for 3 and 4S batteries, so it seems that 3 and 4S are commonly lumped together anyway.

 

I've got enough electronics knowledge to know what you're SUPPOSED to do (and therefore had the same concern as you), but I don't have enough experience to know what you can get away with, so I'm just going to have to see how this goes.

[G+_Steve Prior]

Interesting, I think I've noticed that since I added the lights my depth perception is a bit different when looking at the quad, maybe the bright lights are changing how far away it looks.  Will have to get used to that.

[G+_Steve Prior]

I added the red LEDs on the front tonight.  Looks bright, but a concern is that the LEDs might be drawing a lot of current, I measured just the red LEDs at 0.5A, so 1A of total current draw for the LEDs seems like a high price to pay.  I'm using 5050 60 LED/m strip and I've got a segment of 3 LEDs on each arm.