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Turn a beacon light into status light

Make a literal status indicator for yourself!

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This is a VERY simple project to turn those very cheap beacon lights into IRL status indicators.
You can get those lights from Aliexpress, eBay, or Amazon for less than 3 bucks a pop.
NodeMCU (Lolin) boards can be purchased for very cheap, or you can wire up ESP-12F (ESP-12E) module for that purpose.
I extracted the 12V relay and transistor from scrap electronics, but you can simply use relay modules for more robust and safer operation.

The project is very simple, and it can be built with random parts from your junk heap.

This uses a NodeMCU board (as shown above) and a script (available from https://github.com/UnforeseenOcean/StatusLight ).

If you don't want the flashing function, you must replace the transistors (J3Y) inside the lights with either a link or a resistor. I used an SMD resistor (that's quite undersized)

Depending on the stock, you might receive one of two types: One with the classic astable multivibrator circuit or one with the IC. I didn't modify one with the stable multivibrator (other than swapping the LED color with the green light), but I did modify one with the universal 8-pin chip.

Light with astable multivibrator
This light uses an astable multivibrator circuit to flash.
Light with the 8-pin chip
This light uses an 8-pin chip.

(Also note: See those empty pads near the top left corner? You can put an amplifying transformer on the row of 3 pins and a passive buzzer on the two pads above it to add a siren functionality.)

To disable the flashing function, replace Q2 with a link, bridging pin 2 and 3 together.

To make it easier to wire the lights up, I made a change to the circuit, which you can see here: (see the project log for the full schematic)

I tied all the negative connections to the lights to make the circuit easier to make, then simply wired everything else as usual.

The finished board looks like this:

Note the weird circuit I have for the reset button: It was due to the type of button I used, which only had Normally Closed contacts on it. Since I think most buttons will have Normally Open contacts, you can simply leave the resistors off and connect the reset switch between RST and G pins.

  • 1 × Wemos NodeMCU (Lolin) board Or other ESP8266/ESP32 boards
  • 3 × Beacon lights (12V) Modify a white light to any phosphor based LED
  • 3 × 12V relay
  • 3 × 1N4001 Discrete Semiconductors / Diodes and Rectifiers
  • 3 × S8050 / 2N2222 Or other transistors

View all 10 components

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