Car Audio Project: 405 with Lightpipe

[Wildlands]

So I started asking about some ideas for some ways to charge a GITD coated subwoofer ring in a car installation in this thread. Most of my friends know I am a little off, and my obsession with audio and sound can be entertaining and alarming at the same time, so when I started talking about putting a laser in the car, I am sure I caused some concern.

http://laserpointerforums.com/f38/car-gitd-charging-ideas-74995.html

That provided a few good ideas, but after reaching out to FlamingPyro here at LPF, he came up with a cool concept that would achieve the objective with some uniqueness. I wanted to have something that could run off 12v DC, which would charge the GITD pretty quick.

FP sent me a pic of this stuff, called Lightpipe, with a 445NM laser giving it some glow!

I was sold on it immediately.

He sent me a couple ideas for an adaptor to mount the lightpipe to a laser diode mounted in a heat sink.

He already had lab heatsinks in stock, and those would be ideal for a flat mount on a surface near the subwoofer ring.


So FlamingPyro took a module heatsink he had been working on for other projects, and started modifying!


With the driver mounted in the heatsink.


I am missing the steps where he mounted and wired the diode in. He drilled a hole so the pot could be accessed (but will not be!), and drilled holes to run the wiring down into the amp board. Here it is, finished!

We wanted to restrict the voltage when the alternator was charging, so the white heat shrink contains some voltage dropping diodes, bringing the voltage down from 14.5 to the driver's max voltage of 12 volts.

So FlamingPyro shipped this out to me, packed like it was meant to survive any disgruntled parcel worker.



He sent me spare lightpipe to use for testing. You can scrape the coating off it to have light come out in certain places. My thought was that we could scrape the inner surface facing the ring to release more 405nm light, but I was pretty happy with the outcome, so I haven't taken advantage of testing this yet.



Next step was to figure out how to run the Lightpipe around the subwoofer ring to keep it spaced for even charging. I took some aluminum stock and did some cutting, punching, drilling and painting to make some GITD pipe rails.



Now for some installation!

1.21 Gigawatts for this ride!


I have a cover that goes over the sub and amps to protect it, losing about 5 inches of rear cargo floor area, it has embossed "Danger:Laser Radiation" and "Danger:High Voltage" logos with the universal warning symbols on it. I have a switch panel going up front with the rocker switch to turn the laser on and off. This is tied to the ignition so that when the car turns off, the laser is powered down.



A few things.

As always, it was a pleasure to work with FlamingPyro. He is chock full of great ideas, and capable of bringing them to life. I caught him at a bad time, when he was gearing up for a massive array of fireworks for a 4th of July display, but he still took the time to toss ideas around with me, send me pics, and figure out what we wanted to do. He had projects lined up before mine, but he kept me in the loop on his schedule. When it came time to work on my project, he cranked it out, and kept me informed of any questions or concerns.

The GITD ring is UltraBlue from Glowinc, and charges in about 4 minutes with this on, and when you shut off the car, it continues to glow for hours. The lightpipe rails are done with orange/yellow GITD that I got off Ebay, that was surprisingly good.

The laser puts out around 400mw at the module, diminishing to about 97 at the end of the length. We used a piece of aluminum foil with adhesive on it to reflect/stop the excess photons coming out the end. It makes me think I could scrape some of the coating off facing the ring surface and get more light on the ring, but it looks pretty good. If I mess up the process, FlamingPyro said he could obtain more Lightpipe if needed. The heatsink is big, and there is no duty cycle. I thought initially, I would want to turn this on and charge the ring, but it looks cool, and so it's pretty much on full time when it is dark out.

My night pics are terrible, and I'll add some better ones that show the after effects of the charging.

P.S: In case anyone cares about the car/audio, here's the listing:

The install is on a Chevy Equinox Granite Black 2012 LTZ, 3.0 (upgraded alternator)

The intent is to keep the system as low profile as possible, retaining as much room and stock function as possible. The interior was removed for sound deadening additions, and replaced to retain stock look.

With this in mind, the factory headunit was retained, and speaker level outs were used to provide sound to the processor, which then fed the amps at an RCA level out.

Rockford Fosgate 360.2 sound processor (this takes the speaker levels and turns them to RCA levels and provides a remote turn on switch for the amps, plus having significant time delay and level setting capability for each channel)
Rockford Fosgate 1501BD monoblock amp
Rockford Fosgate 851x 4 channel amp
Rockford Fosgate T600.2 2 channel amp
Eclipse SW9152 15" subwoofer
2 Rockford Fosgate Punch Pro 5" tweeters
2 Rockford Fosgate Punch Pro 6.6 midrange
2 Rockford Fosgate Punch Pro 8" midranges
Rockford Fosgate 40 Farad Capacitor

The overall build has the tweeters built into the kick panels near the feet of the driver and passenger. These are amplified by 2 channels of the 851x, crossed highpass at 4k. The 6.5's replace the stock speakers in the front door, they are baffled to protect from moisture, and the door sound deadened, powered by the 3rd and 4th channels of the 851x, crossed 4kHz, and 400hz. The 8" midranges are in the stock rear door speakers after resizing the holes, replacing the 6" wizzer coned stock speaker, with significant door sound deadening, powered by the T600.2, crossed at 400hz and 70hz. The sub handles 70hz and below.

The subwoofer is being built into a fiberglass box that sits in the spare tire well, centered. The tire mount bracket was drilled at the spot rivets and then folded down to the floor. The sub fires up at the ceiling and the sub amp and 4 channel amp and sub amp (matching silver) will go in a row behind the seat. The capacitor is mounted to the right of the sub along the rear wheel cover where the original sub was. The sound processor and T600 amp are mounted in the stock sub area. A false floor covers the subs and amps, raising the level of the back deck about 4-5 inches, losing a little room for transport, but still allowing bikes to be thrown in the back, dogs to walk on it, and the transport of a spare tire if needed (I just use AAA).

 

[ped]

Couldn't you have done the same thing with EL wire, at a FRACTION of the cost?

 

[Wildlands]

Not even close, based on what I have seen. I have a bunch of EL wire, though none of it is car battery inverted, only AA battery DC inverted. Purple is terrible, and low output. I actually use it to frame a GITD drawing board in my living room. It doesn't even charge the board behind it well.

This is radiant with the laser.

And it wasn't that expensive. Jeff's prices were very fair.

And the point wasn't to have EL wire, that's already in the dash near instrumentation displays. It was to have a laser in my car.

 

[eugene420]

WOW what a sweet audio set up... I Bet that system is extremely loud inside your closed car!

I love that 405nm color, it really lights up your sub.. FP is a great guy to do business with, glad you had a positive experience.

Here's a question, do you light that bad boy up while your driving, or does it even create that much light towards the front of your car?

I imagine if a cop saw a really bright light source coming out of your trunk he might pull you over to check it out..

Anyways great idea.. Post a few more pics. Cheers buddy :beer:

 

[Cyparagon]

Are you familiar with the term short circuit?

 

[ped]

I must disagree.

I had en EL wire installation in my car nigh on 10 years ago, buy crap EL wire, you'll get crap results.
I bought the good stuff, and it was traffic stopping, I had people getting out of their car at the lights to look at my interior . But...if you wanted a laser in your car then fair play, its lot more bragging rights than EL wire.

 

[Wildlands]

eugene420: Thanks man, this is my baby. I run clean, clean, clean sound. When it is clean, it doesn't sound loud. I haven't had it metered, but this is louder than I need. I tend to like the dynamic headroom. When that clean pure bass note hits, I get goosebumps.

I have been running it full time at night. With the rear seats up, you can see some purple on the ceiling, but the interior of the car is black, which does a good job of absorbing those photons, and keeping them from bouncing out the windows.

The windows are tinted, which cuts visibility into the car. From within the car, drivers seat, I can see some of the loop of the pipe in the rear window if I look, but it does not affect rear visibility. If you stand outside and look in the rear window hatch, you can barely see anything until you stand within a couple feet of the rear window.

If I put the seats down, you can see the ring in the rear through the front windshield and side windows. It is not blinding, it is actually quite soothing to see. I haven't had any issues with police, but I run legal, and hopefully, it won't become sticky


Cyparagon, don't try this at home!


Ped, where did you get your EL wire and what size do you use? What inverters?

I have blue stuff that is pretty good in terms of visibility, but it still doesn't charge GITD well. I have yet to find any purple that was really worth buying, most of them wrap the blue phosphor in a red casing, which doesn't work real well.

I'm always open to finding a good product and I do like EL wire, it wraps much easier than this lightpipe. I wouldn't mind adding some accents, if you have a suggestion for a vendor.

 

[junglesmacks]

The best EL wire comes from the original Israeli company to make it.. Lytec. The best vendor that I've found is (Cool Neon EL Wire)

If you could feed a properly sized inverter with steady 12v-14v straight from an alternator fed battery, then you should be able to get some nice quality luminescence from it..

 

[ped]

I'm going back ten years now, I had 10 meteres of it running all through the grooves around the interior, It looked like a car from Tron , it was amazing .


But your right, if memory serves..it DID NOT make GITD glow.

 

[Flaminpyro]

Only in your brain :crackup:

Are you familiar with the term short circuit?

 

[tommmtom]

I was tempeted to sell my 445, then thought I could maybe use it in my car for something (I was thinking theif burner.... ) So came on here to ask for ideas and saw this thread! Have to say it looks brilliant. Hmmmmm..