Has anyone made that light kit that’s posted here? You know the How To with the Radio Shack parts? I’ve spent the last 6 hours looking for Led chasers online that might work and I haven’t found anything. I really don’t want to spend too much money on my pack, so I’d like to make my own light kit. Exoray and Hyperdyne labs has nice kits and trust me if I had the money I’d buy them. Just wondering if anyone has made that same kit and if you had any tips. My dad is going to help me put it together but one question we had was where would be the cheapest place to buy PCB? Anyways thanks fellas.
My kit is based off of Keith’s design with several modifications, the circuit works as is or at least should… There is one possible flaw I found in the circuit as posted but Keith claims it works as is and I don’t doubt him…
As for the PCB board, you are best off breadboarding it… Dollar for dollar it will cost you more to have a ‘one off’ professional PCB made and purchase the parts then it cost to purchase my kit… Not to mention you would need to make the CAD/CAM files to have the board made…
To be honest you will easily drop $50+ on making Keiths kit, watch your bottom dollar before you think you are saving some by doing it yourself the cost can run off…
I built the circuit on a bread board using the schematics found on this site. I had two years of electronics in high school and a semester at the Junior College, so I have a little knowledge of electronics and I can’t say it was a fun project… Here is my two sided opinion of building the kit myself…
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It was a pain in the ass to build. Reading and understanding the schematics wasn’t hard, but the work itself was tedious and time consuming… With super bright LEDs and other components, I probably spent $60+ and that was just for the parts. That does not include my time, if I were to have paid myself $10, the cost of my kit would have easily pushed $200… Bottom line is, I will probably never go that route again. I’ll either buy a pre made kit, or use a basic stamp computer to control the lights.
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Here’s the other side of the coin… Once I completed the kit, I was extremely proud of myself for accomplishing that task, it felt great knowing that I had built that on my own. I had a real sense of accomplishment… I am glad I built one and now that I have that experience under my belt, I feel okay using other options for adding lights to my pack.
Exoray, It’s been a couple years since I made that kit. But I don’t remember finding any flaws. I did how ever change the values, because I used LEDs instead of light bulbs. But other than that I don’t remember any problems… Except the one thing I could never fix was the cyclotron lights. They always pause for a second before starting the sequence over.
Here is my suggested fix for Keith’s design it has been a long time but I believe the cyclotrons would freeze (or at least act up) on my initial build up without this modification…
Break the connection between pins 15 and 13 and replace it with a 10K resistor…
I’m glad to hear someone else that has built up the light kit back up what I have said on cost… I feel like a pushy salesman when I try and tell people they won’t save much by doing it themselves, even though it is the truth…
Anyway I agree the satisfaction of building it yourself it great, but it can be equally frustrating and a waste of money and time for many that don’t have the experience or skills…
Funny thing is that I never thought of asking my dad for help until the other day. My dad is an computer/electrical engineer and I was so focused on doing this project myself that it didn’t even occur to me to ask him. But just like Exoray mentioned the price would be $60+, and he’s right. I went to Radio Shack and they’re not cheap. LEDs are $2 each, breadboards are $25, I would need a soldering kit and that’s $20 and they didn’t have much of the stuff. I’m not wasting anymore precious time searching online for light parts. So I’ve decided to just purchase a premade kit. I understand what you mean about making it yourself and feeling proud. But I’m making the pack myself and I know once I finish I’ll be just as proud. So I needed a little help with the lights, in the end it’s all about the finished product. So thanks fellas for the advice and Exoray if you ever get the gun light kit finished put one of those and the pack light aside for me. I’ll buy them both.
Juan
The bread boards I was refering to should be that much. Their just a thin piece of plastic with a bunch of holes in it.
I didn’t mean you should be any less proud… Even if you bought everything you needed to build the pack, you’d still have to put it together and that in itslef is an accomplishment. I wish you the best of luck. 
:lol: Even with my limited experience it was almost a waste of time and money. :lol: At the time I built mine, hyperdyne was the only kit I was aware of. Otherwise, I probably would have bought your kit. I think it’s very reasonably priced.
Yeah I saw those too, but I still need to test everything first before I solder it together. Maybe after halloween I’ll try to learn circuits and stuff like that so I can put together my own kits. Right now I have what 11 weeks to get this done. Eeek!!!