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Review – AVAGO – ASMT-LW60 – LED Fibre Optic Strip

I’d say that LEDs have been one of the fastest spreading new technologies in the last 10 years. Consider now that most cars are being manufactured with LED lighting for all the turn/marker/brake/DRL lights. They have even made an impact with home lighting – even though people are being gouged with inflated pricing (IMHO) from places like Home Depot, Rona, Lowes etc.. This will change as LEDs become mainstream… Just wish I had invested in those companies who first got on the bandwagon!

Anyway, I decided to go away from the typical LED strip and try something new. The Avago ASMT-LW60′s are classified as LED strips, but I am not sure I agree. They are unique in that they use fibre optics to provide the illumination while a tiny SMD LED is buried inside each end of the light unit.

Review – OPTEK – Warm White LED Strip

Lately, I’ve been toying around with different LED strips for my projects. I’ve had the chance to use a variety of LED strips (both RGB, and single colour types). They come in many flavours – water proof, 3m-backed, silcone encased, sealed, non-sealed, exposed etc. All have their advantages / disadvantages.

Nissan Juke – Footwell & Glove Box LED Lightning

Next on the block – adding LEDs to the foot wells and glove box. (Prev mods: LED Tails and Rear Passenger LED mods)

This mod can be especially useful this time of year up here on the 49th parallel since we are pretty much in darkness @ 5PM during November. All to often I drop something down near my feet and have to go looking for it. The light that casts from the map lights does not reach the areas down near the front driver/passenger foot wells, so I decided to add a few tiny LEDs to shed some love in the area when needed. In addition to this, the Juke comes with a MASSIVE glove box and no light. So, it was natural to throw a small LED strip in there as well. Both sets of LEDs are hooked up to a custom controller that uses an ATTiny85 and touch sensitive pins to control on/off states (I’m not one to go with status-quo, so the standard on/off switch would not cut it for me).

The switching unit (below) has 2 pairs of pins and 1 switch. The switch is used to control the rear passenger LED and is discussed here. Each pin pair make up a galvanic touch sensor that use the conductive abilities of skin to bridge the connection (reads – won’t work with gloves). Touch them once and the LEDs ramp up (on), touch them again to power them off. The top pair control the foot well LEDs, the bottom controls the glove box LED.

Nissan Juke – Custom LED Tail Lights

I’m a sucker for not conforming to status quo when it comes to my toys.. This includes my new Nissan (2012) Juke. In this mod, I added a set of LED light strips to the tail lights with a twist – I wanted to also monitor and react to braking to enhance the effect. I decided to go with an ATTiny85 using the Arduino core. It only needed 1 input from the 12V brake power and 1 PWM output to control a MOSFET which in turn powered the LED light strip @ 12V. I built one controller per tail light. Check out the video to see it in action:

Dual LED Desk Light Controller – Arduino

I’ve been involved in microcontrollers for some time – but of the LEGO Mindstorms flavour (and BASIC Stamp to a lesser extent). Lately, I’ve jumped on the Arduino bandwagon. I’ve always had the natural nack to fix pretty much anything that has batteries or a plug running out of it. As the Arduino revolution has picked up dramatically over the past few years, so to has my desire to do DIY projects around the house. At some point in the future, we plan a kitchen reno. Part of that reno will the addition of under-cabinet LED lighting. Since that is far off, but I also had the need for better lighting in my office, I figured this would be a great time to proto something for the kitchen upgrade, while making something functional for the office. So, here it is..

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