Custom Scanner Need Some Electronics Help
Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2011 2:03 am
Hey Everyone. I'm still fairly new to this forum and for those of you who know me from the others you know for the last couple of months I've been building a custom scanner to work with my JC Whitney control box. I've pretty much got it working well and it is much brighter during the day but still not bright enough. Not wanting to stop at what I've done which isn't too shabby for my first try, there are a couple of improvements I'd like to make to the project that I could use some help with.
First I'd like to upgrade to brighter bulbs than I have currently. The original JC light bar comes with these little Cristmas tree lights that look good at night but barely visible during the day. So when I built my custom bar...
I used regular #1003 light bulbs which were about 10 watts brighter than the JC bulbs. While it is more visible during the day and the trailing effect is somewhat better it's still not where I want it. Now eventually I'd like to upgrade to halogens but I thought for now I would try going with 1156's because they are twice as bright as the 1003's(according to the package). I just don't know if the JC control box will be able to handle them (1003's are 12w and 1156's are 27w I think). To produce a better trailing effect I was told I could add capacitors to the lights but I don't know if I just solder them inline with the wires from the box or if they need to go on the circuit board. I also don't know which capacitors to use. One suggestion was for 4700uF units but I don't know if this will work with my setup. In addition I'd also like to figure out how to create the "All On" effect when the box turns on. My electronics knowledge is fairly basic but I do know some stuff. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
First I'd like to upgrade to brighter bulbs than I have currently. The original JC light bar comes with these little Cristmas tree lights that look good at night but barely visible during the day. So when I built my custom bar...
I used regular #1003 light bulbs which were about 10 watts brighter than the JC bulbs. While it is more visible during the day and the trailing effect is somewhat better it's still not where I want it. Now eventually I'd like to upgrade to halogens but I thought for now I would try going with 1156's because they are twice as bright as the 1003's(according to the package). I just don't know if the JC control box will be able to handle them (1003's are 12w and 1156's are 27w I think). To produce a better trailing effect I was told I could add capacitors to the lights but I don't know if I just solder them inline with the wires from the box or if they need to go on the circuit board. I also don't know which capacitors to use. One suggestion was for 4700uF units but I don't know if this will work with my setup. In addition I'd also like to figure out how to create the "All On" effect when the box turns on. My electronics knowledge is fairly basic but I do know some stuff. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks