Hey everyone, my pack is nearly complete, and I just received. my beautiful lighting kits for both my pack and wand from exoray. A quick question for you all…I have seen some power cells with the lights mounted such that the lens of the LED’s are facing straight outward through the power cell window. I have also seen packs where the LED’s are mounted on their side so the sides of the LED’s shine through the window. Any opinions? Which would be more screen accurate? THANKS!
-Matt
Neither. The lights used in the movie were incadecent bulbs. 
I would mount them at a angle more rather then straight out personally since they are real bright… Even totally sideways they will be bright enough…
As said above LEDs are different then incandescent bulbs so the effect isn’t going to be “screen accurate” either way…
My first mount I did then slightly side on but I didn’t like it. This time I mounted them straight on as I really liked the brightness of the LED’s and thought it was the striking feature of the lights and wanted to show it off.
My Pack... may as well! WIP - Proton Packs - GBFans.com shows how I did the cyclotron lights. I just making taped them to the L brackets so I can easliy remove if needed without damaging the wireing. For the blue bar lights I inserted a brass motherboard mount into some dowel, glued that to inside the shell then screwed the bar into the mounts. Works a treat. Will add pics at one point if I can.
( I managed to repair the ribbon cable flynn, but will use the new one when it comes as it will be better than my repair job!)
If they are too bright facing out, you can always add more blue plastic to the power cell window to block some of the light.
Too bright??..is there such a thing…it’s like a girl that’s too pretty, a car too fast, or too much money
I put mine on a piece of acrylic I bought from Home Depot and they look GREAT!!
-Trey
please post a pic - I can’t figure out the best way to mount the blues!!! Thanks in advance!
Here you go Jayse
Take it slow when drilling into the wood. Drill a 6mm hole then glue these in. Use motherboard screws to attach the board to the inserts the 6-32 thread M3 (also from maplin)
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=37594
Infact Jayse if you wish to go down this route I can make you 2 if you like and send them to you? No charge.
Wow that is an amazing offer! Thanks so much!! I think I will try this route tho since I’m in the US and this is for Halloween i’m thinking i’m on my own due to the time constraints.
so i’m really trying to see what you did there.
a dowel - with drilled hole - insert the entire metal piece from that link? or is there a female end in the dowel, a separate piece entirely - that you screw the M3 thing on to.
Basically is it:
dowel + female piece + M3 spacer
or
Dowel + m3 spacer.
Thanks so much for the idea! I was totally picturing something else!
I’ll draw a naff paint diagram to show what I did as the pic wasnt too clear.
The motherboard mounting screws you will need are these
Your diagram is inaccurate. You can’t mount the lights that way, because the mounting holes are flush with the first and last LED’s. The board doesn’t extend beyond them.
I’m still working on my mounting solution, but what I’ve done so far is used those same square wooden dowels and mounted them lengthwise to each side of the power cell window, to sit flush with it.
Then, I used a razor to cut a 1/2" strip out of a CD case for the window glass, and shaved the sides down with a razor till it would slide between the dowels. This sits on a 3/8" lip at each end of the window formed by the front panel of the power cell.
And behind that I will place a thin layer of blue plastic, and then tack both in place with glue on the wood, since my “tacky glue” apparently won’t adhere to the acetate or whatever that stuff is.
If I’d been thinking properly, I probably would have put the plastic down before the dowels, but then I would have discovered my glue won’t stick to the plastic, so I guess I’m lucky I did it this way instead!
As for the final mounting of the the lights with this configuration, I guess I’m gonna have to find something thin to create a narrow ledge for the screws to go into, because the holes actually sit halfway inside the space the window occupies. Or I’ll simply use my old friend gorilla tape to tape it from the inside side, onto one of my dowels.
Using those motherboard mounts is a good idea though. I’ll have to see if I can get some of those locally. I couldn’t find any place that carried small screw mounts like that and I couldn’t remember where I’d seen them before!
Also, it’s possible exoray has changed his board design since whatever version you got. I just bought mine, so I’m basing my mounting scheme off that.
Depends on which side you are looking at the lights from. Looking at the lights at the front then you would be correct, but if you look from the back you would see the dowels first
I don’t think you understood what I was saying.
This is how the LED’s are laid out on my board:
o_________o
Where the o’s are the mounting holes and the *'s are the LED’s.
That is a top down view of the board.
Now if you were to mount the dowels the way you show it would be like this::
||…||
||…||
o_________o
||…||
||…||
In other words, the LED’s do not all fit between the dowels. There’s no way to mount the dowels across the top and bottom of the power cell window and have the LED’s face out. The first and last LED’s would have to be inside the dowels to do that.
This is how I mounted mine:
===========
o_________o
===========
Dowels running parralel to the LED’s, flush with the edge of the window. The diagram doesn’t show it right, but the top dowel would actually be halfway over those screw holes, and the bottom one closer to the LED’s by half. So you could almost screw the LED’s into the top dowel, but not quite. And if you could, the dowel would then be overlapping the window.
So, I suggest wither finding a way other than screws to attach it, or maybe notch out the dowel and glue mounting screws halfway into it, or put a thin piece over the top of the dowel to act as a lip you can screw into but which won’t be right up agains the power cell window like the dowel alone would have to be.
I didn’t see that diagram a moment ago. That confuses me. It doesn’t mesh with your other diagram. The second diagram looks like you’ve mounted the LED’s sideways and they’re screwed into a short length of dowel. But the first looks like they’re facing out.
I’ll just have to post a photo later of how I intend to mount them and to show you what my circuit looks like.
this is the lights mounted
Yeah, that’s what my circuit looks like, but if you do that, then you block the window a bit. The led’s themselves are only like half the width of the window at most, maybe a third.
Not if you position it right you wont. Trust me my lights are fitted so you can see the led’s through the window without seeing the dowel.
Every pack is different so there is no right or wrong way, I did this quicky picture for someone a while back, it’s pretty messed up and a mirrored image but it should get the point across… You can use metal ‘L’ brackets either screwed, glued or even double sided tape works wonderful for this application, to the outer wall of the powercell and have the light bar mounted on them… Take my advise double sided tape works wonderful, as it’s pretty permanent but can be removed if need be, get the better exterior grade double sided tape though not the cheap stuff…
Yeah these ones in Kevin’s pack are at a slight angle: