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Leds for automatic

Ultra Shine

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Anyone do any retro fitting of Leds on IBA units?

i see TSS has some very high priced light bars but I don’t see how they hook up.
wondering if you can hook it up to multiple outputs so a different light comes on at different times
 

MC3033

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Haven’t done any IBA but most of the LEDs are 120v and come with a 24v power supply. Should be able to wire it up to an output
 

APW

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I mounted them on my ceiling right above the windshield and wired them to come on with my soap passes. Customers seem to like it. I use blue and the whole inside of the car lights up really good. I also have them come on with the "Carnauba Wax" on my top wash.

 

Ultra Shine

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I copied another wash and added to 7' color changing strips in my IBA with my Razor. Looks great and I bought these instead of getting the
Spectra Ray option as these constantly blanket the car in color as opposed to just when the machine is passing over. View attachment 1302
So they are on all the time or only when car is in position?
where did you get them?
 

Sparkleclean

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we did it in a pdq g-5. we used 2 288 watt rgb light bars from tss per bay. there is an old thread here somewhere on it. you need a different controller for each color you want to use. you hook them up to the outputs for the chemical solenoids so they turn colors on depending on the cycle being run at the time. unfortunately nothing is perfect as there is no solenoid for high pressure rinse so no color during that cycle. I still have my electrical schematic around somewhere if you need it.

I can tell you that after 2 years in the bays the led clusters have started to fail and all the heavy rubber wiring feeding it all has dry rotted and cracked. that is on the 288watt rgb lights from tss but I imagine it would be the same wiring for 288 or 144(??) we easily could have used the smaller wattage lights as they are very bright.

now we have green for the first 2 soap cycles and blue for sealants, multi for triple foam and yellow for hot wax and red during drying. they become quite eye catching at night and it is possible to wire them so they flash multi color when the machine is NOT in use for attention.
 

Sparkleclean

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soonermajic

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APW & Slash
Do you guys have an RGB, or single color?
If single, do you have multiple single different colors, that come on & correspond to the different applications? If that's the case, what was approximate cost?

I think this is a helluva idea...
 

slash007

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Mine is RGB, but I have it rotating between green, blue and red with a hold time of about 3 seconds.
 

Sparkleclean

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You can accomplish what you want with 1 rgb light but you will need multiple controllers, one for each function (color) you want to use, BUT beware that the way those rgb lights work is yellow light is created by using blue and green led's. So if the light is in front of the person it wont "look" yellow but the illumination from it will be yellow even though the customer will see green and blue dots.

So we use red, green, blue, and multi color, which is all three rgb led lights togther. but that actually illuminates white in the bay. We added a second led g&g light that was solid yellow for our hot wax function because we didnt like the look of the green and blue led's creating the yellow look based on where the light was positioned

If you want the schematic i drew up when i designed ours i can send it to you. Its rough but informative. I even had tss and meanwell (the ac/dc converter company) check the schematics before building it.

All you do is take the signal from the digital output cards (in the pdq g5 case anyway) and run them to ice cube relays in another electrical box. You need 1 relay for each function you plan on using. You will need a special 3 way relay for triple foam rgb color, single colors use single pole relays.

Ice cube relays do have problems with led light clusters, they eventually fail. Not sure if there is a beter relay out there yet for led lights. I used what was available to me at the time. I was told it is a "known" industry problem with them.

Besides the relays, the extra junction box also contains the ac/dc converter and 1 controller for each function. So in our case i have 5 relays, 5 controllers, and 1 converter plus all the wiring. The tricky part was wiring the controllers properly to prevent cross over electrical signals.

There are photos of our setup at the link to the old thread i posted above.
 

Sparkleclean

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Ours cost a little over $3500 per bay to install, but that was using 2- 288 rgb lights per bay, which in hindsight was over kill. The lights themselves were $1000 each. We also had tss build us custom stands so the lights are vertically mounted to each side of the exit door and angled so as to not blind anyone. We also mounted our yellow led on the cross bar for the bridge rack so it aims down at the windshield.

If i did it again i would use only 1 rgb and probably mount it differently, we were satisfying our OCD by using two lights per bay for aesthetics.

You could also use them differently then function lights. You could use them as package lights. So 4 different packages each corespond to a color so the customer "feels" like they are gettig their package. Basic red, premium blue, works green, top wash yellow etc....... then as the customer pulls in they see they are getting what they paid for.
 
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