Greetings fellow programmers. It's been a long while since I had posted here, but I'm in a emergency needing of some help in quickly modifying my TRON DISC to light-up! Does anyone here knows what be the BEST COST EFFECTIVE WAY to do so for next week's Halloween event I'm attending(I'm getting the suit done within the fastest on my end as well - YEAH, good ol' procrastination-buttme).:facepalm Please LMk if you know a GREAT LINK/SOMEONE that can provide some good fast tips and thank you!
I was going to create an instructable for the Tron disc I just finished modding, but this won't be done until after Halloween. I'm assuming you have the identity disc that already lights up and want to mod it to be brighter/stay on.
Here is a video that I used as a reference early on:
Tron Identity Disc LED Custom Mod Cheap and Easy - YouTube
I used a different placement of the lights and i believe different battery arrangement as well, since I wanted bigger/longer lasting batteries. Here is an overview:
Things you will need:
- Led strips (around 2 ft) : The Leds I used came in a 15 ft roll and are quite affordable, here is an example
Flexible Light Strip 300 SMD White LED Ribbon 5 Meter or 16 Feet By Ledwholesalers,2026wh - Amazon.com
White works just fine since the disc has a blue tint to it. There are a few different ratings of LED's, but i've found that the 3528 is more than birght enough (any higher and you will kill your batteries too fast). I'm sure if you look around in your city you will be able to find somewhere that sells these.
- Dremmel/cutting tool
- Hot glue gun
- 8 AAA batteries
- Soldering kit (preferred but you can get away with hot glueing everything if you need)
- Several feet of wire (don't need more than 24 gauge)
- Electrical/Duct Tape
When you unscrew the disc and separate the two halves, you'll see that basically everything is connected to the "bottom half". The top half contains the inner ring that lights up. The basic concept is to set up two strings of LEDs for the inner and outer rings.
To do this, you will first need to strip all of the electronics out of the bottom half and cut out EVERYTHING that isn't part of the structure. This means you need to cut out the battery box as well, just don't cut out the screw barrel. Also note that the two outer "lips" on the disc that hold the blue ring in need to stay, as well as the screw barrels. You also need to cut off the little tabs that stick out of the rubbery blue ring that sits in between the two halves (these are the ones that secure it around the screw barrels, don't worry they aren't actually important).
For the top disc half, the goal is to allow more places for your LED's to shine through the inner ring. The actual ring itself can be removed by CAREFULLY using a flat head screw driver and pushing on the exposed sections until it slowly comes out of the plastic section it is set it. After this I simply dremmeled several holes into the side of this section so the new led stip could shine through. Note that this section holds the very centre of the disc in, so make sure you leave enough plastic to hold everything together. To be clear, I dremmeled the side closest to the centre of the disc. I did this to keep the LEDs out of the way from everything else. Once this is done you can pop the clear plastic ring back in and hot glue the LED strip on.
*Note* Make sure that you test your disc often to make sure it will close with the modifications you are making to it.
Now it's time to set up the batteries. I used AAA batteries because they are small enough to fit in a line around the inside of the disc. All you need to do is solder them together with a very small piece of wire in between each battery. This is needed since they will be laid out in a circle around the inside of the disc and the angle prevents them from connecting consistently by themselves (set up in series). Once you've done this, set up the second LED string in a circle around the edge of the disc facing out. The string should almost be flush against the blue ring, but again make sure that it's set up in a way that your disc will still close.
Once this is done, connect your batteries to your LED's and set up a switch where the old on off switch was. I went to THE SOURCE/Radio Shack and found one for a few dollars. Tape the batteries down as well as any loose wires and you're pretty much set!
Using this method it shouldn't take you more than 4-5 hours to mod your disc. It won't be as pretty or as organised as other methods, but it works.
