How To: Dimming LED's

by ukarmy04 | July 17, 2012 | (14) Posted in Tips

This is just a quick tip for anyone who wants to add a little life to their LED's.  This trick allows you to dim and brighten your LED strips proportional to the throttle of your motor.

In order to make this work, all you need to do is connect your LED strip's positive and negative wires to 2 of the 3 ESC output wires.  When the ESC sends an AC signal to the motor, this signal hits the LED's and causes them to turn on and off very rapidly.  This rapid switching is what gives the appearance of dimming and brightening on the LED's.  The higher your throttle, the faster it turns on and off, the brighter the LED's get.  


It is important to remember that this only works when there is a motor connected to the ESC at the same time. The motor provides a certain back EMF (electromagnetic field) to the ESC so that it knows the position of the motor.  If the ESC is not receiving this back EMF then it won't know what signals to send and the LED's won't dim.  As you can tell from the video, this can be very useful in a quadcopter, as most people have their LED's and ESC's close together.  

Hope this helps some of you who were looking for a way to do this or maybe just want a way to make your LED's a little more unique.


COMMENTS

BigRed1 on July 18, 2012
sweeet
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rcjoseb on August 6, 2012
Cool idea!
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colorex on July 17, 2012
Nice tip! You could use this for an EDF afterburner effect too!
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ukarmy04 on July 17, 2012
Thanks! That's actually where I drew inspiration from. I wanted to do a dimming effect but didn't have any brushed ESC's lying around. Turns out it can be done with a brushless setup as well.
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Kevin Lee on July 17, 2012
It's cool...! Thanks

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noah on July 21, 2012
Great idea thank you for posting i will try it out!
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Jhb on August 27, 2012
Is there any risk to the ESC's or motors with this set up? I just added this to my tricopter but wired in with the bullet connectors by the motors at the end of the arms instead of off the ESC ( I wanted to further reduce wiring and did not want to mess with the ESC). It works well and looks good but I don't know if there could be long term damage due to this additional load wired this way.
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serkan on October 2, 2015
I am curious about this too
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Heavygravity on July 18, 2012
Nice and simple. Many thanks!
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rcflyer729 on June 1, 2014
that is nifty
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How To: Dimming LED's