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LED light strip mod... Night flying like a boss

Found them. They are about $18 at autozone. I have both the blue and white. Originally just had the white and bought another white and a blue a few days ago that I havent used yet.
You can split them open to get the clear casing off to reduce weight and bulk.download.jpeg
 
The only color I didnt use were the amber looking ones. Costs under $10 for 5 colors 10 of each Amazon prime.
They draw about 12mA each so even 9 only draw 108mA which is pretty much meaningless
I have a few more LEDs coming tomorrow I think that are different than the others I have. Going to wait to get them before doing another.
 
Did one more early this morning. I like this one as it uses all 5 color LEDs I have and they are not overly bright.
Color scheme is left side red and right side green like an airplane plus a blue on each leg plus 2 Amber's in back and 2 whites in front.
This gives me orientation in every direction with all LEDs inside except for the 4 blue on the legs which give me enough light to see where they will touch down. They point straight down instead of a 360 glow.
Really hard to type right now as im in a lot of kidney stone pain. I've got a 10mm+ one trying to block my left ureter. Got an xray this morning and saw my Urologist who immediately scheduled his next surgery opening this Friday as theres no chance it will pass. Was hoping to not have to go to the ER before the operation but the pain is almost too much.
Anyways, this time I didnt bother gluing down the ones inside the arms as they want to stay at the end as the wires push them that way.
Took a lot of soldering to wire 12 together and some hot glue to get all the wires and connections in place so theres nothing preventing the normal vibration dampers from working normal.
The blue directional leg ones came from an auto parts store and have super strong 3m tape. They were a 4 pack and around $20. They were also a pain because they have 1 wire each like a small pair of headphones and you had to remove the outer insulation and then scrape of the conformal coating from the wire ends after carefully separating them making sure no blue coated wires mixed in with the copper coated ones.
What I ended up doing was wiring them in groups and then adding another wire to connect them to the main.
So, theres the 4 blue arms soldered to the power wires then the 4 arm ones soldered together and then the front and rear all with an extra wire.
I soldered the wires for the arms and front/rear together with an extra wire and finally you end up with 2 wires for 8 LEDs and the 2 power/leg wires. Solder them together and that's it. It's all protected by conformal coating, shrink tubing and hot glue.
Still only draws about 144mA which again is basically meaningless for flight time.
One pic shows I had to slightly trim down the moon cuts where the drone fits in the case as the legs keep the drone up about 1/16" too high to shut.20190123_075752.jpeg20190123_075801.jpeg20190123_075807.jpeg20190123_075833.jpeg20190123_110422.jpeg
 
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The Breeze is good to go! Sorry for your medical troubles, hope you get relief soon.
 
Been dealing with kidney stones for 30 years now, I know what you are going through. Does the white LEDs by the camera interfere with the view of it?
 
Ya know, I havent tried the camera yet to see if theres any issue.
I did another one once the pain calmed down
There are 5 blues inside instead of 4. All internal. Nothing attached to the bottom cover. 8 might drill out some of the cooling holes to the next size up since theres a lot of wires going over the heatsink.
20190123_174249.jpeg20190123_174256.jpeg20190123_174309.jpeg20190123_174312.jpeg20190123_174314.jpeg20190123_174320.jpeg
 

I hope you get some relief soon. Kidney stones are a very particular kind of pain. After having a massive stone removed via lithotripsy from my right kidney - the thought of being kidney punched on one side by Tyson and the other by McGregor was only slightly unpleasant. 'It can't be any worse'!
 
I'm on a VERY powerful pain reliever 24 hours a day and have been for about 10 years now. I have MSK (medullary sponge kidney) with chronic pain that feels like kidney stone pain. It's rare like maybe a few 1000 people have it. I dont have to have kidney stones to have the pain issue and theres really nothing that they can do about it.
I also am always loaded with stones so theres that too. Over the last 30 years (I'm 53 now) I've probably passed a few 100 stones but until now I've never had one over 4mm and havent needed anything done such as lithotripsy. Now I've got a 10mm+ on the left side and a 5mm+ on the right.
I did get a stent put in once when they goofed up and thought I had a 5mm+ and put a stent in but then after they took the stent out I passed the 3mm stone and ended up almost dying in the hospital from an internal infection .
Anyways, messing around with projects such as the drone lights is a decent distraction from the chronic pain.

I received (4) 1.5W and (2) 3W white LEDs yesterday evening. The 3W ones are pretty bright but are not light due to their heatsinks and I'm unsure of how much the Breeze can lift safely. Says 19 grams for 1 and 5 grams for each 1.5W. I would guess a single 3W would be OK but it would be pretty cool to put 2 on. I can always tape any combination on and try a hover inside and see what happens.
That reminds me that I should weigh the heaviest one I light modded against a non modded one.


I weighed the light modded ones out and the heaviest only added 20 grams.
Heading to hospital in about 25 minutes for my surgery;)
 
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2nd/last.
The first pic shows part of the wiring as I added a 12V to 5V for an LED that constantly changes color. All of the others are 12V.
The second pic shows the color changing one that's above the power button and a couple of amber/yellow. There are a bunch of lights on the cover itself as the 3rd pic shows 6 white ones at the camera slot.
I did airplane lighting for the legs as in left is red and right is green.
So, there are 6 whites at camera, 2 blues on each side, 2 amber's in back, 1 color changing above the power button, 2 whites between the optical flow and ir sensors, 1 green on each right arm end and 1 red on each left arm end.
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Some more. Trying to show the color changing one with different colors. You can see that each side has 2 blue ones mounted in the body in the last pic.20190308_143934.jpeg20190308_143943.jpeg20190308_143946.jpeg20190308_143954.jpeg20190308_144023.jpeg20190308_144032.jpeg20190308_144100.jpeg
 

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