Airbus Led Backlighting

[NNomad007]

Hello simmers,

This is my first question regarding technicall informations, so i appologise if its already been asked.

I was fortunate enough to come across a lighting & apu control panel from a real a320. For all i know its a prior 1998 panel, so no leds in it, just small bulbs (34 if im not mistaken) powered by a 5v 3.5A source. The color is what we all are used to see in airbus cockpits, though my problem is exactly that!... im a regular presence in the flight deck and i still have no idea what type of leds should i use, since the real color is a soft orange... ill be using 3mm 8000mcd leds. Should i choose Amber ones or yellow ones?............

Does any one by anychance has some sort of schematics on how should i connect all the leds on each panel?..(series or parallel?) .. my idea is to reproduce exactly the real bulb panel, using leds and drilled holes in each panel to place them...if anyone has tried this with success i would be really thankfull if they could help me a bit.

Thanks for all the help!

cheers

[Matt Olieman]

Love to answer your question directly. But, to get loads of multiple answers.... Please do a search (in the above menu bar) and use "led lighting" You'll be amazed at the information that is available :)

Matt Olieman

[NNomad007]

i was amazed!... main problem is i have no idea where to start! :)

anyway, ill investigate a bit further

thanks matt!

[phil744]

Post #45 will answer your question about the LED's

http://www.mycockpit.org/forums/showthread.php?t=12219&page=5

I always wire my LED's in parallel, simple reason is because im lazy but i think I get better reliability doing it this way, obviously wiring them in series means that if one blows you lose the lot.

Tricky thing is with orange and yellow LED's is that they are really sensative to voltage, more than blue/white and red, the ones i use run at 1.9v, however at 1.7v there off and at 2.1v they blow, what ive done is invest in a digital bench top PSU and run the illumination circuit of that, ive locked the voltage at minimum 1.8v max 2.0v, then hacked the PSU voltage adjust buttons so i can have a bright/dim control on the flightdeck, the whole lot cost me about £70 to do.

I hope this helps

[NNomad007]

Hi Phil,

Great help..! by the way... outstanding work with those panels....really, the most realistic ones i ever seen...very impressive stuff.

What led color are you using?..amber or yellow?..

thanks for all the help..ill probably bother you from time to time..if you dont mind..:)

cheers

[phil744]

Thanks for your great comments,

Ok, panel on the left, original A330 LED, panel on the right, my panel illuminated with 3mm Yellow LED's
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b52/madmini1/DSCF3712.jpg

[captdave]

wow it looks great