Lee - the way those neon lights work is by stepping up the 12v supply to a higher voltage (~200V).
Lee - the way those neon lights work is by stepping up the 12v supply to a higher voltage (~200V).
Right not that simple then think i will stick with leds
Fraid not Lee, its all charged particles and stuff :sad:
Cant see any reason not to use LEDs, there bright, efficient and cheap.
we have 2 Red LEDs for weapon & drive power active and 2 cool ultra bright blue LEDs for each weapon function. When upsidedown you can see the glow off the arena floor and they only take 20mA. I think they were around £0.30 each from Farnell. Dont forget the resistor though, very important and for 24V it will be more than a standard 1/4 Watt.
Actually, the internally luminating LUXEON LEDs have been taken out of TAN because of the added wireing and weight. It was a nice effect though. Especially at night during the summer party.
It was hard to see during the day though.
Have a look at
http://www.surelight.com/content.phphttp://www.surelight.com/content.php
It might be what your looking for
A suggestion...
You might try looking for LEDs like the one I picked up for my mobile phone from Singapore which were imported from Taiwan. Theyre mounted on ultrathin circuitboards that you can bend (but not fold obviously). On the phone they run straight from the battery with no obvious power drain. Im sure there are larger ones out there somewhere.
Even my little LED circuit can make me visible from the other end of the shopping mall.
Kim - The problem I can see is that that uses an invertor to step up the voltage... Which I think weve written off.
My little LED board is called an FPC or flexible printed circuit board. It might be worth using a web search engine to search that with LED.
I think I am going to have to scap the neon lights or LED effect as the robot is well overweight and I am going to be scrounging for every last gram, but thanks for the overwhelming number of solutions offered. Maybe in my next bot.
Joseph Townsend
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