Underwater Light System - Construction Manual - Crew Aboard ...

LED Underwater Lights for Model Boats By Reto Fornasieri

LED Underwater Lights for Model Boats Inspired by OceanLED® I developed an easy to build underwater lightning system for model boats based – as the original – on LED technology. In the following sections I provide a step-by-step instruction to make it easy for you to build it by yourself and turn your ship into a real eye catcher! This guidance is free – just state my name and web address as origin in case of reproduction. Oh yes, if you send me a picture of your illuminated vessel I would love to see it! Step 1: Construction of the LED housing Rather than gluing the LED directly into the boat hull you might find it useful to construct a corresponding housing for it. This will allow to make the lights really waterproof and the LED can be change very simple at a later stage (e.g. if you like a LED with a different color or something went ill): 1) Take an aluminum tube with in inner diameter of 6 mm what we result in an outer diameter of normally 8mm (1mm wall thickness). 2) Cut a piece of about 15mm in length. Make sure the cuts are precisely in a right angle otherwise the light beams may be out of angle later on. 3) Glue the aluminum tube on a piece of 2mm acrylic glass whereas the glass should be slightly bigger than the outer diameter of the aluminum tube. To glue you might use any strong glue, e.g. rapid glue. Be careful not to blind the glass what might happen from certain glues. I have use power glue from UHU do it.

4) After the glue is fully dry you simply sand the glass down to the same diameter as your tube

Step 2: Insert LED housing into Hull Depending on your boat you need a couple of LED housings. I have used five of them whereas the positions are as follows:

2010 – Reto Fornasieri, Switzerland www.crew-aboard.com

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1) Drill a hole of 8mm diameter where you plan to place the LED 2) Insert the LED housing into the hole and make sure that the glass surface is in line with the hull outside. This is to prevent unnecessary turbulences what would reduce the speed of your boat!

Hull

3) Use an epoxy glue to seal the housings from inside to hull. As the hull thickness normally is less than 2 mm this gluing is giving additional strength to the glass/tube connection.


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Step 3: Insert LED into LED housing and completed electric wiring I have use the extra strong blue LEDs with a diameter of 5mm. Depending on the current of your power supply and the specifications of the used LEDs you have to switch a resistor per LED (never connect a LED without resistor as this might destroy the LED. As a resistor is a very cheap electronic part it is simply not worth to risk a LED and the work load to repair the light system!). To calculate the needed resistor refer to the various LED resistor calculators available in the Internet (e.g. http://led.linear1.org/1led.wiz). To fix the LED in the aluminum tube I have used a piece of heat shrinking tube. With this system you easily can remove the LED again and it is nicely fixed even the boat is shaken in heavy conditions! One more word to the power supply: I normally use a LM7806 to create a current of 6 Volts. With this 6V power supply most LEDs paired with the regarding resistor in the range between 30 and 150 Ohm just do a perfect job. The LM7806 is another very cheap part (around 50 Cents) which allows to use the normal boat power supply (e.g. the 7.2V racing pack) as it is transforming any possible current between ~7V and 20V down to a constant 6V! Everything more is just transformed into heat.

OK – now it is your turn! Go out and impress your friends with a 'warp like' propulsion system on your boat! Have Fun!

What I have used: Quantity Type

Description

5

LED 30° 5.600 MCD 5MM BLAU

Abm./Dim.:

(Ø) 5 mm

NICHIA

Farbe / Color:

Blau

Material:

GaN

Ausführung:

Glasklar / Crystal Clear

Source www.conrad.ch; Art.Nr. 180766

Abstrahlwinkel: 30 ° Typ:

NSPB510AS

Wellen-Länge: 470 nm

1

LM7806

5

Resistor


IF:

20 mA

IPULS max.:

100 mA

UF:

4V

Gehäuse / Case:

5 mm

Lichtstärke / 5600 mcd Candela IV: UTC LM7806 LINEAR INTEGRATED CIRCUIT 100 Ohm

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LED housing with epoxy glue sealed on the inner side of the boat hull. Fixing of LED in the housing done with shrinking tube.


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