Hobbypartz LED sale

[lazor 22]

I am working on getting stuff together for a night rig. I noticed Hobbypartz has a really good sale on LED's. Anyone have them, how is the quality? It is going to be a removable night rig, something that I can put on and take off quick, think it would stand up to the wear of taking on and off? I was going to go with a 2s lipo also, is 800mah good for say 4, 7 minute flights?

[TheBum]

The size of the lipo depends on how many LEDs you end up with. The LED strips are configured with sets of three LEDs in series. Given that each set is going to pull probably 15mA on 2S, an 800mA pack discharged to 20% would give you 30 minutes of lighting with 256 LEDs (((640mAh / 0.5h) / 15mA) x 3). That's a lot of LEDs, so you're probably safe.

[lazor 22]

I was thinking, 120 (2m) to wrap up and down the tail boom and fin, and 60 (1m) to put on a canopy. So that should be able to do 4 flights fine. I would go 3s and put a brushed esc on there so I could get it at the exact brightness I wanted but I figure that is more stuff to deal with, I just want a easy to put on and get off setup nothing fancy.


Still would like to know if anyone has anything to say about the quality? Also what do you think is a cool light combo? I was going to go with yellow on the tail boom, green on the canopy.

[kaos]

At 3S, these leds are very bright. I think they will overwhelm the cool light. But if you tone it down like you said. You can get it to balance with the cool light. at 2S these leds are fairly dim (to my eyes). They are designed for 11V when they put 3 in series with a resistor.
As for 'wrap' around and take them off frequently. I am a little concerned with the solder joints with these strips. the led are soldered to the flexible pcb strip, if twisted and unwind repeatedly. I am concerned the joint may break.
I don't know how you are going to fix these strip to your heli. These strips have adhesive backing. The adhesive is quite good when fixing to a flat surface. But after you pull them off, the adhesive starts to loose their stickiness.
I am saying these based on the HK leds strip. Never have a Hobbypartz led strip in my hand. They look very much alike though. Even the Hk strips has different batches of strips that vary in their component. The older one I had has thicker PCB strip , stiffer and the new ones has thinner pcb strip and more flexible.

I would put these strip on 'something' and try to make 'something' is removable.
I think part of my set up can be considered removable.
The led on the skid is glued to a stick and the stick is attached to the skid with 2 self tapping screw which can be removed / put back on easily.

[TheBum]

2S is plenty bright. For the canopy, I took one I crashed, patched it up, and stuck the LEDs to it. I'm actually running all my strips with 6S across sets of three strips in series, which effectively gives me 2S across each set. I have the same number of the same color LEDs in each set of series connected strips. The sets themselves are then connected in parallel, of course.

For the tail, I did the wrap thing with a dedicated fin, only I left the backing on the strips. I've converted and unconverted the heli several times and haven't seen any issues with the components on the strips. The only place the strip is anchored is at the front with a single zip tie; the spiral supports itself quite well. Since my tail strip is a single 3-strip series set, I have to run a wire the entire length of the boom to connect to the tail end of the strip; I run it under the strips to keep it against the boom. I had to use a small bullet connector in the wire to keep it from getting all twisted up during installation and removal. I connect it only after the lights have been anchored.

Make sure you put something on the struts. I initially omitted strut lighting and had problems determining exact attitude of the heli, particularly in the roll axis. I was able to build the strut lighting into a single assembly of strips and wires, again with the backing still on, which I can easily strap onto the heli and then remove even more easily.

I also have a landing light in the canopy that I switch using a Dimension Engineering PicoSwitch.

I used Deans Micros to connect everything up. I have a harness that connects to the balance lead on my flight pack and has three connectors on the other end: one for canopy, one for struts, and one for tail.

[lazor 22]

I was only going to use the adhesive backing for the canopy, which will be permanent. For the boom I was going to leave it on and zip tie it.

When I tried glow wire, I put 2 of those glow sticks on the skids, it worked fine. I was going to do that.