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LED Upgrade for Larson Scanner
One minor issue with the Larson Scanner I built and posted on Instructables was the fact that the '60 LEDs per Meter' LED strip from Adafruit had a different spacing for the LEDs than I had for the holes in the grill of my car. Some of the LEDS were behind the mesh of the grill and not visable. To address this, I went to Ebay and found "50PCS WS2811 RGB Full Color 12mm Pixels digital Addressable LED String DC 5V " @$17.98 shipped. The ones I got did not say waterproof, but I got lucky and they were. If I buy another set, I will be sure to verify I am buying a waterproof string.
After verifying they would mount on my grill with some minimal re-work, I put it on the bench with my controller and substituded the new led String for the existing Adafruit one. I then changed the code to reflect 51 LEDs instead of 61 (string + 1 LED for encoder) and tried it out.
Since everything worked well on the bench, I removed the grill from the car and test fit the LEDs into the holes in the grill, this was a little tight, so I enlarged each hole slightly with a 31/64" drill bit, then finished with a rasp.
I secured the LEDS with clear 'Silicone Form a Gasket' and let it dry.
The grill had 39 holes, so I installed 39 LEDS and clipped off the excess to use in another project.
From there it was just a matter of connecting up the cabling
as the Adafruit strip has been, then replacing the grill.
It now has a much more finished, OEM, look.
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Clip off Excess
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