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Ok ... so what is a small tennis shoe doing on this page. Well, the shoe belonged (past tense) to my granddaughter ... Jessie, and I acquired it through devious means. Not really!
This is the kind of tennis shoe that has three (3) strobe lights! You know ... those really fancy strobe lights that work perfectly for radio controlled fireboats.
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A little cutting here ... a little cutting there ... and before you know it ... you have three (3) strobes and the controlling mechanism in your hand.
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From what I can tell the on/off switch is actually a very flimsy spring that vibrates with the slightest movement. When the spring vibrates, the connection is made to activate the strobe electronics. Power is supplied by a large, flat watch battery.
The entire mechanism is housed in a clear, solid chunk of plastic so a little drilling will be necessary to access the switch and power contacts. But until then, here is a photo you can enjoy.
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My plans are to use the three (3) strobes from one shoe on the starboard side and the three (3) strobes from the other shoe on the port side. When I hold the three (3) LED bulbs together and then activate the switch, a really nice emergency strobe effect is obtained.
The red arrows in this photograph show the location of the emergency lights on both the port and starboard side of the mast.
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The emergency light housings on my boat will be a little larger than scale, but this was not avoidable due to the size of the LED bulbs.
I manufactured the housings from ABS plastic and clear Lexan®, and I made them as small as possible.
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After securing the LED bulbs inside the housing and gluing the housing together, it was time to strip the old wires and solder smaller ones. Smaller wires were necessary to route them inside the mast, and the original wires were simply too large!
There is low voltage here, so the smaller wire will not matter!
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