I bought 50cm of 5050 SMD LED strip in orange for backlighting my car instrument gauges. the 5050 LEDs are very bright which is good, but Id recommend getting 2835 type as smaller and not as bright.
Because 5050 LEDS were so bright I made a defuser out of a 2L milk carton as too bright for instrument backlight. works well. You can cut 5050s every 3 chips (2835s every 1 chip i think) so I made strips of 3 to go behind gauges and connected them with twin core wire. I took the power feed from rear of connector solder joint, the "lights on" power feed is last 2 pins. See photo. Check polarity with a meter I got mine wrong way round as turning board upside down and around! No problem just swapped wires over on the LED strip.
I mixed the orange strip with pink/purple LEDs in the bulb holders and it looks good and not too bright.
Delivery of LED strip took about 10 days to UK from AliExpress. The strip lights work well i think. Put green behind the milage LCD, but might change it. Used the original bulbs blue rubber cover over the T5 / 286 LED as its very bright through the LCD. Could really do with a defuser pushing in behind the LCD at a future time. There's a hole where the light goes and cold shove a piece of plastic in. Not sure about getting it out again if it needs changing.
Hope this helps someone else who's messing about with instrument cluster lights.
Because 5050 LEDS were so bright I made a defuser out of a 2L milk carton as too bright for instrument backlight. works well. You can cut 5050s every 3 chips (2835s every 1 chip i think) so I made strips of 3 to go behind gauges and connected them with twin core wire. I took the power feed from rear of connector solder joint, the "lights on" power feed is last 2 pins. See photo. Check polarity with a meter I got mine wrong way round as turning board upside down and around! No problem just swapped wires over on the LED strip.
I mixed the orange strip with pink/purple LEDs in the bulb holders and it looks good and not too bright.
Delivery of LED strip took about 10 days to UK from AliExpress. The strip lights work well i think. Put green behind the milage LCD, but might change it. Used the original bulbs blue rubber cover over the T5 / 286 LED as its very bright through the LCD. Could really do with a defuser pushing in behind the LCD at a future time. There's a hole where the light goes and cold shove a piece of plastic in. Not sure about getting it out again if it needs changing.
Hope this helps someone else who's messing about with instrument cluster lights.
