Tutorial written by : Ben999_
Last edited: February 6, 2004

I’ve seen many people clueless of how to install LED’s in their jewel, and if they weren’t then it was because they used that other tutorial that “wasted” resistors and had people using too big of a resistor to get the full glow from their LED’s. So here’s a superior guide for everybody to use.

Stuff you’ll need:
Soldering iron 15 - 35 watt
LED’s (5mm or 3mm, the higher the mcd rating, the better)
Hot glue gun
Molex hard drive power adapter, either a Y-splitter or pass-through
Wire (stranded, not too thick, not real thin either)
Resistor (value depends on number and type of LED’s used)
Electrical tape

Before you start, make sure you have removed the jewel (I prefer using the freezer method), then clear the jewel and cut out the plastic where the jewel was, making sure to leave a lip for the jewel to rest on without falling through. I won’t go into detail on those steps; they are separate tutorials on their own.

First you have to decide how many LED’s you are going to use. I’d say 4 is the least you should use if you want it to have a decent glow, but 8 is best for max glowage :P . Then you have to measure around the hole and mark off where each LED will be glued so they’re all evenly spaced apart. Use the inside of the case to denote the middle of the circle (the X is directly left and right of the jewel). Then you’ll have to glue each LED in place. Make sure you glue all the LED’s in the same position, with the positive leg either up or down on every LED, doesn’t matter which, just as long as they are all facing the same way. If there is no longer leg, then the leg that is attached to the thinner piece of metal inside the LED will most likely be positive. Check out the pics to see how you should glue them.

Evenly spaced.

All the positive legs facing upward, negative legs down toward the case.

Next you’ll have to strip the insulation from 2 lengths of wire, an inch or two larger than the circumference of the jewel hole. These wires will circle around to each LED, separately on each leg. Make sure the wire will reach all the way around, plus a little extra. After you strip the insulation (there’s no real method to it, but you’ll need some tools most likely), twist the wire so that the strands don’t separate from each other. Then lay one of the wires around each of the negative legs, so it’s touching the bottom leg of each LED. Then you will proceed to solder the wire to each negative leg. Solder the ends of the wire together, this is where the ground wire will be connected to. Then, you’ll want to do the same thing with the other stripped length of the wire, just going around all of the positive legs. The positive and negative wires should never touch each other, it will cause a short and they will not light up. More pics…

Now you have to calculate what value resistor you will need to solder to the positive wire. Since you are connecting them all in parallel, and the resistor gets used before it hits the ring of LED’s, it does not need to be a large resistor. I only needed a 15ohm resistor, but you WILL NEED A DIFFERENT RESISTOR depending on the LED’s you are using. At http://metku.net/index.html?... there is an LED resistor calculator for LED’s in parallel. You need to know the current your LED’s use (probably 20mA), the voltage required per LED, the supply voltage (5v), and the number of LED’s you’re using. Once you do that, buy the resistor you need, solder it to the positive wire that circles around your ring of LED’s. Then you can solder a wire to the other end of the resistor. Resistors do not have a positive or negative end, they’re both the same, so don’t worry about that. Next you solder another wire to the negative wire going to the negative legs on the ring of LED’s. Also, at this point you can trim off the excess on each LED leg. Check out the pics.

In case you couldn’t tell, there’s a black wire underneath the red one.

The next step is to solder those two leads of wire to the Molex hard drive power adapter. I used a pass-through adapter with case fan plug. Now you have to solder to the red wire, which is the 5v source. The positive wire coming from the resistor will get soldered to that. The negative wire connected the negative legs of the LED’s will get connected to Ground, which is either one of the black wires on the Molex adapter. The yellow is 12v, but you won’t be using that, unless maybe you had LED’s using more than 5v, which isn’t common. The method for soldering to those wires is to strip a small area of insulation from the wire on the adapter (maybe ¼” to ½”) using your soldering iron to melt the insulation. Then once the bare wire is exposed, strip about ½” of insulation off the end of your positive wire (connected to the resistor) and wrap it around the bare wire on the Molex adapter. Then solder all around the joint where the wire is wrapped around. Wrap the joint with a small strip of electrical tape. This ensures that the connection is not only electrically stable, but physically strong as well. Now do the same thing with the negative wire to one of the black Ground wires. The result should look something like this…

I didn’t have to solder to the ground wire, since this was a fan wire that already had a Ground lead.

The hard part is over now, so go plug it in your XBOX and test it out. Assuming everything works correctly, you can now cover all your connections with hot glue. You should decide how much is really needed, but I always use a lot. Before you glue, bend down the positive and negative legs so that they do not rise above the LED itself, but also make sure they don’t touch each other. This is to make sure you don’t have the problem of not being able to close your case because of your legs spreading apart : ) . After you do that, squeeze the trigger of that glue gun and let loose. Here are some pics of how I did it…

You won’t have to use as much glue if you strip the insulation from only small areas of the wire instead of the entire thing, but that takes much longer and it’s a heck of a lot easier to do it this way. And of course no tutorial would be complete without some pics of the finished product, so here you are…

Really a testament to how well hot glue distributes light.

Simply stunning.

Tutorial written by : Ben Wenger 2003 – http://casemodz.cjb.net/ - Ben999_@excite.com