# Custom LED/NVG lighting help wanted/needed!!



## BraqueHunter98 (May 1, 2014)

Gents and ladies,
I would love to recruit some help on piecing together components for a modification I am planning. The modification is to change the lights in a helicopter pilots kneeboard from incandescent to LED. Currently the light is powered by three "AA" size batteries inside of a tube. The incandescents drain the batteries within about 5 days of minimal use.
What I am looking for is to replace the incandescent lights with a setup that has two strips, or a series of single lights, that are white LEDs and Green LEDs that will be a bit more gentle on the eyes and equipment during night flying operations where NVGs are utilized. So the problems currently are that the battery consumption with the incandescents is too high and the incandenscents put out a more blinding light during NVG goggle use. In addition, the yellow incandescent lighting does not do the best at illuminating a 5x8 inch yellow notepad that we use for taking in-flight notes.
So for the changes that I would like your help on... I am looking for either two strips (one white and one green/NVG compatible) of lights that would be between 4 and 6 inches long at the most. Both strips would need to be bright enough to light up a 5x8 inch yellow notepad without being too bright or blinding. I was thinking each strip would need to have between 3 and 6 LEDs each. I would like them to be dimmable. The light assembly would have to be battery powered with a combination of either "AAA" or "AA" size batteries, or similarly sized batteries to cut down on weight. And lastly, I would need to have both a very small two way toggle switch and a small reostat type of turn nob/dimmer. The dimmer would be the on/off switch for the settup and the toggle would only swap between the power from the riostat sending power to either the white strip/lights or the green strip/lights.
Any and all suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated. I have searched Google as much as I know how to and the only light strips I can seem to find are only 12 long, which is much longer than I need or can fit inside of my kneeboard. I also am having a difficult time finding strips that are battery powered and not 12 VDC or 24 VDC.
Thank you ahead of time for anyone willing to post their suggestions here. All your help is much appreciated!
Respectfully, -J-


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## TEEJ (May 1, 2014)

Depending upon the amount of actual light you need, you may not need as many LED as you thought. ONE LED can put out as much light as a 100 watt incandescent light bulb for example, which would be far brighter than you need.

Instead of using a series of 3 AA, you might only need ONE rechargeable lithium ion cell to get sufficient voltage.

You could use red or green or white LED for example, in any combination you wanted to, with dimming options. Typically, just varying the amps changes the output of the brightness.


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## BraqueHunter98 (May 1, 2014)

Do you have any good online sources for materials that I might need to piece a project like this together?


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## Walterk (May 5, 2014)

Dimmable to almost zero is the most important, colour is less important. It's more choice then need to have multiple colours light.
Its all about intensity and wavelength. The artificial light should not be picked up to hard by the image intensifier. 
What tubes are in your NVG? Do you use the same NVG everytime or are there more sets of NVG to be used in the cockpit?
What does the spec-sheet of the tubes tell you about sensitivity of wavelength?
Is the cockpit rated for class A or B filters? Do you use A or b filters?
When writing on the blocknote, I suppose you flip the goggles up.


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