So I got a flashing 3mm blue LED from Malcs today. I was planning on mounting it in the HDD molex, and so I did. And now it's flashing blue light all over my room... Hope I can get used to that, because there is no way I can get rid of if without putting on a new connector. It's sealed shut with hot glue. I still haven't got the camera back, but here are some (bad) pics of the graphics card with some UV reactive traces and components. I will probably draw more UV things on it later on, and I will improve the pics when I get my camera back. Anyway, enjoy:
There are two series of two leds each. These two series are connected in parallel, if you understand.
I'm going to borrow a yellow fluorescent pen from a friend. I find the orange a bit dull. I tried getting pics of the UV tracing with my regular digicam, but it turns out it's easier with the camcorder (as it can go much closer without losing focus). I did, however, take these two pics: Here's the case with only UV light on (plus some blue stuff on the top). Here's with some red lighting on. You can see the two UV LEDs shining down on the graphics card too.
Bezel lights, inspired by Daydreamingknight Daydreamingknight was, to my knowledge, the first to execute this mod, mounting lights at the top of the bezel, shining down. This was a quick mod, took me ten or maybe twenty minutes from beginning to end. The LED is connected through a 100ohm resistor to the 5V hub box shown in a previous post. I drilled a 6mm hole on the underside of the bezel's "top". Then I put a 5mm LED through the hole and squirted in hot glue to firmly mold the LED into position. Then I used a mobo header wire (connected to my 5V hub) with an LED socket in the other end. I connected this to the LED. This light looks really cool when I open the CD - or DVD tray, because it lights up the entire disc inserted. It also creates a nice glow on the floor in front of the computer, sort of like an UFO glow, even though my computer doesn't have any feet of any kind - it stands directly on the floor. I might add a small tube or other form of screening to the LED, so that the actual LED can't be seen poking through the hole when you look at the computer. Now for some pics:
The UV LEDs are 500mcd I think. Or is it 500mcd visible light? Not sure. I got feet for my tower too, but I have chosen not to use them.
Great modd Bard! I`m modding a Bigtower to. I have one question: How do you open the cd-drives? Relocated eject-button or what? Can`t see any buttons.
Thunder_return, I simply open the CD/DVD trays by right-clicking them in Windows. As this method works perfectly, I have never bothered to relocate the buttons or making those "press drive cover corner to open" things.
Looks good Bard. Another way of doing this is like this:http://www.zapwizard.com/mediapc/cdrw/ (But much harder in the end
I've actually thought about doing that UFO glow thing to my CD trays too, but then with an other color, maybe blue. Or maybe just having an LED shining inside the drives (I don't have the drives' original front bezels on). The reason for having the LED on top is that I can see which CD is in when it's dark in my room. I also thought about having micro switches inside the drives, which activated the top LED when the drives open. Haven't bothered to do it yet, though. BTW, is it possible to hack into an existing micro switch in the optical drives? Maybe by using transistors? That would make it a lot easier.
You don't need a transistor even. They are simply switched to ground when active. So adding a LED inline won't hurt anything.