Hello!
Awright, I let them talk me into it...
About exactly 2$ worth of materials:
10 white LEDs, 10 100 Ohm resistors and 2 meters (about 6 feet) kynar wire.
Surprise: Israeli Jerry Cans!:
The plan is to make lamps bodies out of them!
Here are the cans sanded up and LEDs soldered together with the resistors. This will giva a current trough the LED of about 15mA
I want to cut the jerry cans up in slices about 1mm thick, shaped like shallow Cs...
...and two such parts would form the lamp housing when glued to the roof. Connections:
"Minus" on white wire, "Plus" on green wire. A popsicle stick with masking tape sticky side up really help hold those little parts before soldering:
After soldering the LEDs fit into their housings:
Now it's a time for a test:
It works! (although I have to tell you that for the first time one of them didn't work - some investigation revealed a faulty resistor). One more thing to do was to add lenses made out of matted clear sheet and cabling channels made out of strips of sheet styrene:
Now I have to quickly finish the interior and put it all together. The plan is to power this baby with an USB cable that would connect to one of the boxes under the rear of the van. Thanks for reading and have a nice day
Paweł