I have recently found my midlife crisis. Thankfully, it’s sabers and not corvettes. I’ve since inherited a 2011 Harley CVO Softail. I thought I’d toss the idea out there about building NPXL frame lighting with a Profile control board. I’d appreciate any feedback about how to and such.
Feel free to chime in. Thanks
I would probably use a Teensy instead of a proffieboard if all you need is light control.
You can still run ProffieOS.
I would probably use 12v neopixel strips. They include voltage regulators, which should make things simpler, because you should be able to power the LEDs directly from the bike’s 12v battery. You’ll still need 5v to power the proffie/teensy, something like this can help with that:
There are a couple of options for waterproof neopixel strips. If you use one of those, you just need to figure out a surface to attach it to, no need for polycarbonate tubes.
Vibration will not be an issue.
Thanks. I was actually thinking of going whole hog. Wire the board into the speakers and all. Maybe a simple audio out cable if I can figure out the solicitation With the paint job I think the Godzilla and Thor fonts with their blade profiles would look sick.
I haven’t done too much research into the strips yet. The diffusion is the one characteristic I’m mostly unsure of. Keeping the seamless light flow like my saber blades and all.
That solicitation should have been amplification.
Diffusion and “not bulky” do not play well together unfortunately.
I did some googling, and it seems that what a lot of people do is that they mount their LED lights inside, or under things, so that the light is mostly directed towards the ground, or parts of the motorcycle rather than directly outwards, and this indirect lighting is diffuse enough that you can’t see the individual LEDs.
Yeah. I’ve seen the same. I figured I’d have to build from scratch. Not too much of a problem. I’m sure I can’t get the same smooth look as film, pad and opaque poly, but I’ve got time and access to aircraft supplies. I may even go so far as resin casting the parts the mate where I’m mounting.
Like I said, planning stages right now. I really appreciate the feedback.
I’d love to see pictures of the plan, work, progress and final results! 
Once I do some experimenting with the light bar materials and find something workable I’ll post back. At that point I’ll be doing the board work and figuring out the power runs. Something I can remove but easily mount to the handle bars with easy access to the buttons.
Now that I’m talking about it I really wish these wild hairs wouldn’t crawl so far up my butt and weren’t so damn convincing. This is gonna look so much cooler than a plain old light bar.
Search for 12v COB LEDs. they typically come with a diffuser coating that doubles as waterproofing.
Just make sure they are addressable.
There are a lot of similar light strips that are either RGB or single color.
Would be funny to hear it loaded with a regular saber profile
@profezzorn, I am planning to use a proffie to control 12V LEDs similar to this post, but already made the purchases to supply power separately via 3x4V for the strip and 1x4V for the proffie (no step down). Does the ground wire from the 12V battery pack go to one of the ground pins on the proffie, or somewhere else? If so, then the ground from both battery packs would be connected together essentially. Is that correct? Thanks!
All the ground gets connected together.
Thanks for the direction, and I’ve wired things up according to the schematic below. When I press the power button (button1), the LEDs do not light up. I’ve connected my computer and ran a couple of serial monitor commands and it registers the button presses and clashes, etc. I don’t see anything out of the ordinary, but I have little experience there.
This is the LED strip I have:
Wiring Configuration:
Here is my Config:
Simple_ConfigHelper.h (2.1 KB)
Can you see anything that would prevent the LEDs from firing? Is there anything else I should check? Thank you for the help.
This really ought to work I think.
However, it’s possible that the 3.3v signal provided for the data line isn’t high enough to count as “on” for the 12v strip. Although I think that should work, because most 12v strips are just 5v strips with added 5v regulators on the back.
If the data signal level is the problem, then you would need to add something that amplifies the signal. One of the easiest way to do this is to take a single neopixel, and hook the + up to the 5v pad. The input can still be 3.3v, but the output will be 5 volt, which should work as an input for the 12v strip.
Are you saying that the input to the 12V LED strip should be 5V coming from the proffie?
I can interpret that sentence in several ways, some of which are right and some of which are not, so maybe?
What I’m saying is that the 3.3v output signal from the proffie might not be enough for the strip to register it. IF that is the problem (which I don’t know) something like this can help:
I added graphviz to the crucible to make this graph… It’s a bit messy, but requires no external programs…