Emergency Led Lighting Made Ridiculously Simple

[Luxeon Star]

UPDATE - UPDATE - UPDATE - UPDATE - UPDATE - UPDATE
9-3-12

Emergency Led Lighting Made Ridiculously Simple is now an Instructable:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Emer...mple/?ALLSTEPS

With pictures.




(original post)

All you need is you car, a led dome light and some wire. Here is the skinny taken off of another post:

"
Here is a link where you can buy 12 volt LED car dome lights. This type (festoon, see link below) are typically non-polar meaning that it does not matter which way you connect them to 12 volts.

http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-b...2Ffestoon.html

If you are going to connect one of these directly to a car battery you should connect long wires to the battery terminals first and then connect the wires to the light (several feet away from the battery to avoid a spark around the battery). The preferred method is to connect to 12 volts through the cigarette lighter socket.

I got mine from here for a little less (the ones with the silver pointed ends are the non polar ones. the ones with red and black wires must be connected red +, black -):


http://s.dealextreme.com/search/led+dome+light

You can probably get these from some auto parts stores too. These are quite bright and can easily provide enough light to read or play cards.
"

Any kind of wire will work but telephone wire is probably the cheapest and you can usually get 100 foot rolls at hardware stores, radio shack, walmart (electronics / entertainment department). You should be able to run a led dome light for several days without running the battery down too far. You may want to start up the engine every day or every other day and let it idle for a couple of minutes. With a full tank of gas you should have lighting for many months.

Telephone wire: http://www.walmart.com/ip/GE-75-Tele...-Wire/16630815

All kinds of low voltage wire: http://www.lowes.com/Electrical/Elec.../N-1z0yt30/pl?

Speaker cable will work fine, so you may be able to get everything you need at a well stocked auto parts store.

If you are a wire head like me you may want to build your own led lighting from scratch:

http://www.armageddononline.org/foru...n-LED-lighting