Boring Green on Display

[Dale Earnhardt]

Ok, soo has anybody gone crazy yet and went ahead got an extra display board and put Indiglo Blue before instead of the plain green????

not sure if your able to do it though, seems like you could if your good a soldering....

[Hightower]

As far as I know the illumination is two LEDs and not an EL backlight. So it should be simple to change the color to anything in the rainbow.

I would change mine to red to preserve night vision - better for surveilance work. Blue would be my second choice

[Dale Earnhardt]

Well I guess if display board were cheap, you could just solder on diffrent color on each and just change em out on your mood for the night lol.....

[Josh]

"I guess if display board were cheap"

hahahahahah

That'll be the day.

-Josh

[Dale Earnhardt]

lol yeahhh no kidding......

[RESCUE161]

$255.85 from Motorola.

Just bought one.

[radio-link]

Well I guess if display board were cheap, you could just solder on diffrent color on each and just change em out on your mood for the night lol.....

Why not use multicolour LEDs together with some control unit? Then you can adjust the colour according to your mood between all possible colours by simply mixing them.

[alex]

I have thought about seeing if I could get one of the people I know who are good at surface mount stuff (e.g. the people who mod cell phones all day) to change the backlight one one of my keypads for grins.

Would make them rather unique!

-Alex

[mr.syntrx]

There was supposedly a special version of the XTS3000 Model III UHF R1 for the Sydney 2000 Olympics in Samsung branding that had a blue backlight.

[Elroy Jetson]

Fifteen years ago, I put red backlight LEDs into the display of a Saber III.

These days, I'd be tempted to do anything regarding changing LED
backlights, including maybe using those wacky ones that flash all colors
in sequence or at random.

Elroy

[Dale Earnhardt]

wow, this post is still going after so many months or a year ago? lol

Yeahh, just put the LED that changes color.. those would work good

[mikegilbert]

Found this on those Olympic Radios:
http://www.geocities.com/bennoc_99/stagecrew.html

The Olympic radio system was a trunking system. They used Motorola XTS3000 Trunking radios. These radios, however, were tagged to be Samsung radios, as Motorola was not a games sponsor but Samsung was. They operated on 434MHz.
Thanks to Dave VK2GZ for that information.

No pictures though.

-Mike

[mr.syntrx]

Yep.

Most of them were ordinary UHF low XTS3000s, with Samsung tags stuck over the top of the Motorola tags, and a plain black vinyl sticker over the /\/\ logo embossed in the battery, speaker mic etc. They may or may not have also been programmed with SP RSS.

The ex-Olympic radios I've used while in the NSW State Emergency Service (complete with SORN tags and the occasional Samsung sticker) all had ordinary green backlights, but I have heard rumours of blue ones from a couple of independent sources. Never seen one for myself though.

[mike m]

I put the indigo blue ones in one of my XTS3000 but I didn't like it so I changed them to red which looks really nice on the 3000 display.

I put the blues in my SABER III and it looks nice on the smaller SABER display much better than when the blues were used on my XTS.


Mike

[Dale Earnhardt]

pictures are worth a thousand words......

[Microwave Mike]

I have seen RED back lights on a System MRK. The owner replaced the green surface mount leds with red ones.
The back, or side, lights used on the XTS are easy to change out. Just pick
your color and don't go over the current limit of the factory originals.
Also, the package should be the same so they fit where the original leds were.


mm

[mike m]

I sent Dale an e-mail about my XTS3000 with the red display backlighting, how do I attach photos here so everyone else can see it ? I don't have a way to host the photos so if anyone wants to see them they can send me a PM with an e-mail address and I'll send the photos.


Mike

[mike m]

Also the XTS series backlight LEDs are a dual packaged 3 leaded white case rectangular arrangement kind of looking like a mini light bar, that I haven't found a source for as of yet but with care 2 single SMT LED's can be placed in the small recessed slots of the original and wired in to the LCD board.

Mike

[mr.syntrx]

To host your photos:

http://www.imageshack.ws

[mike m]

OK here are the direct links, I hope this works

my stock FPP xts5k aside the red display XTS3000
http://img122.echo.cx/img122/6077/mvc004f5qs.jpg

closeup of the red display xts3k
http://img122.echo.cx/img122/8155/mvc005f1lo.jpg

closeup of the fpp xts5k
http://img122.echo.cx/img122/7528/mvc006f5xq.jpg

When I find more time I plan on changing the XTS5k display.

Also I don't have my blue and red LCD sabers with me at this time but I can get them later after lunch and post them.

Mike

[radio-link]

OK here are the direct links, I hope this works

closeup of the fpp xts5k
http://img122.echo.cx/img122/7528/mvc006f5xq.jpg

Mike

Did I miss something here?! The XTS5k is field programmable??! I guess this is a special feature, depending on the flash code? Or how else is this done?

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but the XTS are not so common here in good old europe :-)

[mike m]

Only for governement users or those who deal with the feds as I do. It's not my radio per say, way too pricey for my blood, it's my lab/work radio.

[RESCUE161]

Yes, it is true, but only on special "government" flashes.

[mike m]

Here are my sabers

Blue saber display backlighting
http://img171.echo.cx/img171/8179/mvc002f4ks.jpg

Red saber display backlighting
http://img171.echo.cx/img171/8840/mvc004f1pi.jpg

The blue is ok for viewing at night but it is very very hard to get a decent pix with a digital camera, as you can see the red is nice and easy to shoot overall.

I brought the BLUE drive up about 15 mA over the stock values for a green backlight on the SABER display board and it is still very hard to get a good picture of it. I didn't have to change anything in the drive circutry for the RED backlighting.


Mike

[slm1964]

Nice work on the Blue/Red LED displays.

Would you be willing to share the part numbers / sources of the LEDS you used as replacements? This looks like a fun project!!

[Elroy Jetson]

How's this for "Not boring"?

Got the LEDs off of an ebay seller..from China. It worked out to 25 each, red, green, blue, and yellow, size 1206, for about 12 bucks or so, delivered. Not bad.

For this radio, 0805 size would actually be correct but I was able to make the 1206 size ones work. I actually needed a few known size
samples in hand before I was sure. Now that I've done that, I won't be ordering the wrong ones next time.

You need good soldering skills to handle 1206 package sizes. Better skills for 0805s. 3020s are relatively easy.

Quick trick: Clean the solder pads with solder wick first. Then tin ONE pad. Place the LED over it, apply gentle but firm downward
pressure on the LED, tap the tinned pad side with the soldering iron, and the LED settles right down. Then a quick tap with the soldering
iron and a very small bit of solder (use very fine gauge solder) and you're done. Very neat, clean, and professional.

Holding down the part while soldering it is truly the one trick that matters most.

Since THESE LEDs are larger than the designed pads on the display board, I placed them with the radio turned on, and held them in place
and soldered them while they were actually illuminated. Positioning was quite tricky.


It'd have been a lot easier with the right size LEDs.

Elroy

[emsbuff3240]

thats a HOT radio, elroy.

nice job, 3 thumbs up.

[Elroy Jetson]

My first display mod ever was a UHF Saber II that I changed the backlights out on... to red.

This would have been about 1989 or 1990, or maybe '91. Somewhere around there.

So I guess I'm an "early adopter" or something.

Blue LEDs look good but as you noticed, there are output issues.

I think you will find that you can greatly improve the output of the blue LEDs by getting the
edge-emitting (side lighting) version. Kingbright makes them, at the very least. This makes
a lot of difference. I'll be putting four into my 7100IP (shown above) for the LCD backlighting,
once I get them.

The colors of this photo aren't quite like what it looks like in real life. The white you see is
actually yellow. The camera doesn't quite pick it up right. And all of the colors are a bit more
vivid than you seen on your monitor.



Elroy

[tvsjr]

^^ That's totally pimpin. Makes that ugly MACom radio look almost tolerable!

I'd love to do something similar to a 5000... black case, black sticker, blue LCD backlight, red keys.

[smokeybehr]

I can see the new showcoming to Spike/MTV: "Pimp My Radio". The next thing that you'll do is put "Swarovski Crystals" around the display and a big "crystal" heart on the battery...

[emsbuff3240]

I can see the new showcoming to Spike/MTV: "Pimp My Radio". The next thing that you'll do is put "Swarovski Crystals" around the display and a big "crystal" heart on the battery...

funny you should say that, there is a picture of a pinkBABY PHAT XTS5000 floating around, that someone photoshopped.

I cant find it on here or hamsexy though

[akardam]

Courtesy of mikegilbert

[Pj]

Outstanding.