LED upgrade for construction light

How to for: LED upgrade for construction lights

Please note: that this is provided for informational purposes only and you should be careful when working with any kind of electricity, as it can be dangerous if you are not careful. (This project includes high voltage, please use caution)

Over the summer we grabbed every orange flashing construction light that we could find, at yard sales and junk bins. We ended up with about 7 that were all the same. Instead of buying 14- 6 volt lantern batteries, I wanted a simple solution that would allow me to power them all from one power supply, still flash and be very easy to connect them all together. This system will use one light as the master and the rest are just leds connected to the master. The master light contains a 12 volt power supply, all the flasher circuits and a set of spring terminals to connect additional lights.

This project will be using the small flash boards that were salvaged from the lights before the upgrade, a power supply, and small custom LED boards to replace the old bulbs in the lights.

The high voltage wiring is pretty simple on this project. It is just a 120 wall plug wired to a 12 volt wallwart. Taped well to cover any exposed metal and to hold the wires firmly in place. This will be installed in the master light. This provides the 12 volts needed to run all the lights.

Since this uses the old salvaged flash boards it makes the wiring really easy. the negative side of the power supply will tie to the negative side of the spring terminals and also to the led board that will be in the master light. The polarity of the flasher boards does matter, the red wires will all be connected together and will go to the positive lead of your power supply. the black wire will connect to the individual positive sides of the spring terminals and to the positive side of the led boards. Since the led are low current you can power more them one board from each of the flasher board. This will allow you to add as many as you want to the master light.

What you will need:
1. Orange flashing construction lights

2. LEDs, matched resistors, and a piece of perf board

3. 120volt Power cord

4. 12 volt wall wart power supply

5. Spring terminal(salvaged from surround sound)

6. Nuts and bolts

7. Tools, Soldering iron, wire cutters, screw drivers, zip ties, drill, dremel

8. Wire Cat 5 works well)

LED boards:

LED test:

Getting the flash board:

Master light parts:

Master light power:

Making the master light:

Testing the Finished master light:

Testing:

I Checked all my connections to make sure they were tight, and checked for any possible shorts with a multimeter, finding none, I connected the light up to power and tested all of the LEDs, each of them worked perfectly, And are ready to be installed in the remaining construction lights and be used in the haunted house.

Any questions or comments email: joshua14ss@hotmail.com

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