SpinLite - Teensy Powered RGB Spinning Turn Signal Prototype

In this day of sequential blinkers, circular running lights and led strips. I thought it would be neat to create my own twist. How about a circular light that spins as a turn signal. Or you can always take the back cover off and load some new code to the microcontroller and presto you have a red and blue flasher. Neat Huh! I thought so. That's why I sat down and made the SpinLite. Read on it's really not that hard.

Supplies

Check out my blog for a full BOM with links.

3D Print the Parts

The hard part was designing the 3D files but that's already done so I will not go into detail. But don't be discouraged just because you don't have a 3D printer. You could easily make the base out of some other material just put your thinking cap on. Hint: you will have somewhat epoxy left over..... Epoxy gives wood a waterproof coating..... Get it?

Here are the parts fresh off the 3D printer. The small disk covers the center hole and the key like indention in it allows for the wires to pass out the center hole and begin their circuit around the light. The outer disk covers the outer edge and serves as a form for our epoxy.

You can grab the 3D .stl files from here.

Assembly

Okay now we begin the assembly the strip light I was using have a silicone coating which I was peeling off as you can see in the picture. They are also adhesive backed so the stuck in place very nicely.

I soldered them in place as I went they are all labeled so it's basically connecting the dots with wire. Be careful and watch the little directional arrow that are printed on the strips to make sure that you keep the electric flowing the right direction!

Once I was all done with the wiring I fastened the outer ring down and then sealed it up with Kwik Seal. When that was done I placed a large bead of Kwik Seal around the inside near where the edge of the inner ring would go. Then I fastened down the inner ring.

The blue arrow shows where I placed the Kwik Seal. The red arrow shows a minor imperfection in the 3D printing that I should have sealed up with Kwik Seal.

Epoxy

This is great stuff. It's thin. It's crystal clear. It sets hard. I love it.

This epoxy is easy to use. Mix 50-50 ratio stir for 3-5 minutes pour the form full and presto when it dries you got a hard clear surface. The only problem I had here was I did not get the cavity totally sealed up. So my advice is take your time double check make sure that every little crack is sealed with Kwik Seal then fill the cavity around the lights in with the Epoxy Resin.

Electronics

What you see here in back of this light is a Teensy LC and a LM2596 step down converter. This light is made to run from 12v so in order to achieve that I used the step down converter. They are inexpensive and easy to use simply solder your wire to the IN+ and IN- posts on the one end and the OUT+ and OUT- on the other end. Then use a multimeter to read the voltage as you crank the little screw on the potentiometer until it shows right around 4.8v. Wiring the teensy is pretty simple too as you can see on the diagram. The five volt in to the pin 17 the ground to the ground the data to pin 7. Then simply upload the code found here to your teensy. There is plenty of good information to be found on google about setting up the Arduino IDE and uploading code to a Teensy with it so I won't go into detail here.

Finishing Touches

Okay so I said earlier that some of my epoxy ran out on me. So after that epoxy was dry I added some more. Well I got it a little full.

So I thought no problem I took some 150 grit sandpaper and sanded it down. Then I took some 220 grit sandpaper and finished it down.

Then I wiped it clean of dust but and sprayed it with a can of aerosol lacquer. But I forgot about about how PLA would respond to lacquer. It turned milky white.

But when it dried down it actually looked pretty good as the opening picture at the top shows. It is not 100% clear like before but I am satisfied.