Thread: Has Anyone used 12v LED light bars in their Haunt?

Tweet

I picked up some inexpensive 12v LED light bars from ROSS today and was thinking of coming up with something to do with them in my car or elsewhere (photos of the bars posted in my album).

One idea was to turn my car that I have to park in my driveway each halloween into some type of halloween prop, like a space ship with an alien inside, or a submarine or sunk pirate vessel if there's an underwater theme that year. Picked up the lights in purple, green and neo blue.

Honestly I've never worked with 12v before like this and not sure what the limitations are (like will it drain my car battery before the end of the night?). Other than a car what else can I plug it into (it has a cigarette lighter adapter on them)? Have you guys decorated your cars, etc before using one of these bars (any pics if you did)? Thanks for the help.

Just solder it to a 12v power supply then you can plug it into the wall. Chances are is will use less then 1a but you would have to give me some specs on it.

Cut off the cig adapter
Strip the wire
do the same with the power supply
Solder the wires or crimp them together

Make sure you have the polarity right before you solder. It will work one way but not the other...not always the case though.

That is if you are worried about batt drain.

Thanks for the info Industen. I haven't opened the sealed plastic packaging yet and the packaging doesn't list any specs on it but I think one of the items has directions about hard wiring it.

Right now I'm thinking I'll use the adapter if I use it as lighting in the car. I know from researching this a bit that kids trick out their cars with these type of lights bars and so am hoping that someone out there has used them for prop lighting of some kind and can show off what they did. I'm pretty sure that the light bars ROSS has are an older discontinued product because I'm not finding it shown on the company's website. Still see them being sold on the web however.

I'll see if I can find time to play with them tomorrow. I'm hoping The Fast and Furious brand ones chase like they do on emergency vehicles. That could be a nice effect on a space ship with the green one I bought. I'd also be happy if they produce a nice overall colored mood lighting too. As I recall ABC Distibuting had an LED light strip in blue that they showed under a kid's bed to ward off the night monsters but I don't see it there any more. I suppose if the lights chase you could use them in a lab setting running vertically to indicate some equipment functioning. Just brainstorming now....

I'm not sure but I believe this is the same LED light bar that I purchased. I think there's an interface I saw online that let's you hook up your audio to the bar and the bars' lights will flash with the music. In the case of the video, the drums.