Burned out LED

[Exley]

Sadly one the front leds on my case has burned out (top right to be exact) and i was wondering if anyone had tips on replacing it. manly what type of led to buy so it matches all i know now is that they are blue and vey bright.
here is a picture(they look brighter in person)
http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/5139/compys028ul.jpg
also, while i have the front off i wanted to ask if there was an easy way to change this temp monitor to glow red (so it matches the inside).
again, here is a picture
http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/1021/compys031aa.jpg

[Cannibal23]

ok here goes

when you take the led out of the case look at it to see if it looks frosted or not. frosting or no frosting has a diffrent deffusion effect on the light. make sure you get the same finish as you have now. seccondly if this is a prebuild case the led is most likely a 5 mm led. there are diffrent measurments of how much light output is created this is measured in MCD (micro candilas ya i didnt spell it right but you get the point). it could be tricky to tell what MCD rateing you need as there is usually no visible markings on led's my guess is to aim high as you can always dumb the light down by adding a bigger resistor on the positive (long) leg of your new led. now here is the bad news. diffrent manufactures may all make blue led's but the colors may not be exactly the same. again there are no visible markings on any led i have ever seen so you cant find out that way. if you end up getting one that is slightly off try diffrent resistors again to see if you can brighten or dim the light to reduce how obvious the diffrence is.


as for your temp gauge errr.. well i dont know for sure but i think its one of 2 things. either they are lit from inside the device. in this case i dont think you can do anything about it. or they could have some small surface mount led's surrounding the screen ligting it up. if that is the case then you can change them but its touchy work. these type of surface mount led's are called smd (surface mount device) led's they are very small and tricky to solder (you need very steady hands)

hope that helps

[Aero]

if you need cheap LED's check out www.lsdiodes.com, there cheap and very quick at shipping. But I would recommend staying away from surface mount LED's, they are literaly half the size of a grain of rice, and I think the need toi be soldered on a heatsink to keep the energy from frying them (according to my physics teacher).

[Exley]

thank you for your help, i saw this on radio shack.com
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102851&cp=&kw=led&parentPage=search
and i figured id bring the old LED to radio shack and see if they have any recomendations

i dont know if this makes a diffrence or not but the LED is not all the way out it is dim, my guess is that it is just dieing. one of the lights in my fan controller is blinking, and i assumed the same. but now that i think about it it could just be a bad solder what do you think?

[Cevinzol]

You have a good idea to test the LED first before changing it. swap leads if you can see if its not the wires.


i figured id bring the old LED to radio shack and see if they have any recomendations

Hmm good luck there. Last time I asked a shack stoog for heat shrink tubing he handed me pipe cleaners.

[DaveW]

Why not replace all 6 LED's with red ones, and complete the look? LED's are probably the cheapest components after resistors anyway. You can probably just switch the buggers. If you take the case appart, you can probably find any loose connections etc. although i'm going to guess you've allready checked for that. As for the temperature module, you might find that's a bit more difficult-but it's not impossible. I saw a good tutorial somewhere on this, but i can't remember where.

-Dave

[Jetty_200]

LMFAO...ohhh radio shack...those goofs...haha:P

[Cannibal23]

on a radio shack related note

i remember i asked for the same kind of cable by 2 diffrent names and they gave me 2 diffrent prices once. i dont shop there anymore. in the end it seems like they dont really know anything about electronics at all so if you need to ask a question ... well you might as well just figure it out your self. my best experiances have been with local electronic compontant stores and hobby shops. at least those guys know what they are talking about.

[Exley]

Hmm good luck there. Last time I asked a shack stoog for heat shrink tubing he handed me pipe cleaners.
lmao

Why not replace all 6 LED's with red ones, and complete the look? LED's are probably the cheapest components after resistors anyway. You can probably just switch the buggers. If you take the case appart, you can probably find any loose connections etc. although i'm going to guess you've allready checked for that. As for the temperature module, you might find that's a bit more difficult-but it's not impossible. I saw a good tutorial somewhere on this, but i can't remember where.

-Dave
that was my orignal idea but now im not sure if i feel comfortable chaging it. some of the replies make it sound pritty difficult and i would rather not break that little screen. if i can find a good tutorial ill see if its something i want to attempt.

[Exley]

sorry for the double post. I found this on the net after some poking around. this guy changed his ipod to glow red insted of the normal blueish white by inserting some sort of filter inbetween the screen and the leds, do you think that would work for me so i dont have to desolder thoes little leds. here is the link http://www.ipodwizard.net/wiki/index.php/IPod_Screen_Color_Modification

[Cevinzol]

I found this on I-hacked.com a while back
the guy changed the color of the LEDs backlighting his motorcycle tachometer
article is here (http://www.i-hacked.com/content/view/209/45/)
this might be similar . sorry I didn't find it earlier