How to make blue flashing LED alarm light and wiering guide

[Hardrive]

I was in halfords the other day and my car doesnt have a flashing LED to say its got an alarm and the only ones halfords sell are crappy red ones. so i decided to make my own. and here's how i did it. Also wired it in so that when your ignition is on the LED stops flashing as thats soo annoying.

First of all you will need 1 Flashing LED, 1 Resistor ( ill get to that in a min), 1 LED Holder, Two lenghts of wire that can handle 12v 20mA, Heatshrink tubing, a soldering iron and some soldor.

If you go to somewhere like maplins or somewhere diffrent they can work out the correct value resistor for you as there are so many diffrent voltages for LED's each colour has a diffrent voltage rating as well as the amps used.

This is a guide. I cant go into what resistor you need as there are so many diffent LED's out there. anyway lets get on with it.

You will need to put the resistor on the + leg of the LED and the - Wire on the - leg of the LED see diagram below
http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/5293/leds01.gif (http://img153.imageshack.us/i/leds01.gif/)

I found that if you twist wires before sldering it makes life a lot easier, see pic below.
http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/3643/alim0600.jpg (http://img46.imageshack.us/i/alim0600.jpg/)

once your happy with ur soldering
http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/6237/alim0601.jpg (http://img163.imageshack.us/i/alim0601.jpg/)

snip the loose wires
http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/2728/alim0602.jpg (http://img257.imageshack.us/i/alim0602.jpg/)

and fold wires flat againt them selfs.
http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/222/alim0603.jpg (http://img405.imageshack.us/i/alim0603.jpg/)

then use heatshrink tubeing to make connections secure and to make sure no bare wire is exposed to cause later problems.
http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/3374/alim0604y.jpg (http://img35.imageshack.us/i/alim0604y.jpg/)
heat heatshrink tubeing with lighter to shrink it.
http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/9435/alim0605.jpg (http://img685.imageshack.us/i/alim0605.jpg/)

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/3379/alim0606.jpg (http://img195.imageshack.us/i/alim0606.jpg/)

now the fiddely jobs are done fit the led holder onto led and get one of the blank switches from the car and drill a hole the same diamater at the led holder. and feed wire through and secure led in blank switch. now its time to wire your handy work to your car.

Here is a diagram of where to wire it to

http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/1840/scan00070707.jpg (http://img37.imageshack.us/i/scan00070707.jpg/)

and pics of where ive wired it to on sterio loom

http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/9070/alim0617.jpg (http://img188.imageshack.us/i/alim0617.jpg/)

once its wired in test it to make sure everything works as it should and your happy with it before putting sterio back.

here is a pic of mine finished

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/2227/alim0613.jpg (http://img299.imageshack.us/i/alim0613.jpg/)

and here is a video of what it looks like at night. hope you guys liked this and found it usefull

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioTwVCYnfXY

[Pyro-Adam]

Good guide, may consider this myself... quite a few spelling mistakes though if you struggle with spelling use Google Chrome, inbuilt spell check :)

[stormjojo1982]

good guide mate, hope this one day gets made into a sticky,

[LSOfreak]

i did this to my brothers car a while ago. at maplins you can buy a dummy car alarm for like £3-4 with a variable resistor or something, so you can adjust the rate of flashes and how long the flash stays on for. i also ran an inline switch so that it can be turned off without having to turn the ignition all the time

[Saxo-SX]

Nice guide mate.

I found it easier to just attatch a AA battery pack to it rather than mess about with wires.