This arrived today. Beautiful but very bright. Can I tone it down with a dc to dc converter I using Menards wall wart to supply power. Thanks tstark
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Paint the LED lights with translucent amber paint this will dull them down!
I don't see why not, but be careful to match up your I/O specifications to what you have and want. A converter with an adjustable output to below 4.5 dcv (which I believe is what the Menard's wall wart puts out) might help.
In addition, you could skip the wall wart all together and just get an AC to DC adjustable converter that goes down to less than 4.5v dcv.
As stated above, you could also buy a bottle of Tamiya Clear Yellow or Clear Amber and just paint the lights.
It should be noted that LEDs are current driven devices and thus a resistor is more appropriate than a voltage adjustment.
@tstark posted:... Beautiful but very bright. Can I tone it down with a dc to dc converter I using Menards wall wart to supply power...
Did you decide on a way forward?
The standard Menards wall-wart supplies 4.5V DC. If you read previous OGR threads about guys toning down brightness, the reduced voltage seems to be in the 3.5-4.0V range subject to personal preference of course.
It's just that typical adjustable DC-to-DC converters (or at least the ones talked about on OGR) that run about $5 each might not work. That is, when powered by 4.5V DC these converters will take away 1V right off the top such that you cannot get more than, say, 3.5V DC at the output. Of course you could use a different higher voltage DC wall-wart as the starting voltage. Or as suggested earlier, start with the AC transformer voltage that is 14V AC or whatever and use an AC-to-DC adjustable converter.
@bmoran4 posted:It should be noted that LEDs are current driven devices and thus a resistor is more appropriate than a voltage adjustment.
I'm not clear on which building the OP has, but if it's the one with the rotating Ford vehicle on top that means there's a DC motor inside in addition to the LEDs. Using a resistor to reduce the voltage/current into a DC motor can be a problem. That is, the starting current (so-called stall current) in gadgets of this type can by quite large relative to the running current once the motor starts spinning. If using a resistor, this can starve the motor of sufficient starting voltage. I'm not saying this applies in this case since I don't have one to mess with but is something to consider...OGR being a discussion forum of course.
