LED mod for Lego Star Wars Slave 1

To wrap up 2017 here’s the near-mandatory, and-now-for-something-completely-different, holiday seasons DIY post.

This time around though I’m skipping the turkey in favor of adding LED lighting to thruster engines of Lego Star Wars Ultimate Collectors Set (UCS) nr. 75060 aka ‘Slave 1’.. Aka ‘that clothes iron looking spaceship’ with which Jango & Boba Fett transport their *preciousssss* bounty in in Star Wars movies.

LED mods for Arp 1601 clone

Still time for a quick one before it’s ‘BYE BYE 2016’! :)

While building my TTSH I also got myself a DIY kit of a Arp 1601 sequencer clone. The build itself was so straightforward that I didn’t see the point in blogging the details. However I made some LED mods to it and thought maybe this would be of interest to owners of this device. So if you ended up here looking to change the color of LEDs on your Arp 1601 clone, look no further! If you’re in a hurry, check the summary section at the end of this post.

While you can also find my posts related to the mod at Muffwiggler (Muff) forum, I thought my blog here is a more compact way to present the information. For one, since forum threads at Muff are created by product / project, there’s a number of discussions going on at the same time (esp. if a DIY build). So a thread can become convoluted. Second, threads which span years (or multiple production runs of a kit) can become l-o-n-g, adding to the ‘needle in a haystack’ effect. Third, if you’re not logged in the board system won’t show post attachments or the like. So it can be quite the dig looking for information you need.

But don’t get me wrong, I love the Muffwiggler board and a lot of highly skilled people dwell there. It’s just that often the format isn’t good for finding information that you need instantly.

Well maybe my ramblings aren’t either, but let’s not follow that tangent! :D

My finished 1601 build

Wire LED lamp repurposed

Time for a quick hack! Got a pyramid crystal tower LED lamp for christmas similar to this:

LED wire tree, pic by Michelle (click image to visit).

Pretty fucking horrible :D .. To make it even worse, the LEDs used are of very cold/clean white light type (unlike in the picture above). Put this thing on the shelve, power it up and it’s like the whole thing is shouting “HEY! I’m here and will MAKE SURE YOU NEVER FORGET CHRISTMAS!”. Not wanting to trash this set of 32 pre-wired and perfectly usable LEDs, I decided to figure out an alternate use for them. The solution: a moody night-light for the bedroom!

CD stack lamp

CD lamp by Chad Johnston

I’ve been eye-balling CD stack lamps such as this, this and this for ages, naturally with the intent of making one myself. I actually even started working on one several years ago (2006 or so), but kinda forgot about it shortly afterwards as the lamp solution turned out relatively inefficient. Back then, my plan was to use recycled CCFLs (stripped from old TFT displays). With these, it quickly became apparent that the energy consumption (around 15W) wasn’t really up to par with the amount of light created. Sure enough, lamp projects such as this should be considered mainly for decorative purposes with little emphasis given to functional lighting. But still, getting a bit more than a dim glow would be nice. After all, the CD stack dims down the light source to some extent.