Mount LEDs to a Kato Light Pipe with SoundTraxx Heat Shrink 

Faizal, yes, this is their attempt to make a ‘poor-man’s’ fiber optic. The clear plastic doesn’t transmit quite as well as a Fiber, but it works to display some light up front. I usually replace them with smaller LEDs located directly behind the lens (Which if you look closely, the lenses have been cut off the ‘pipe’. Grin!) But you can do this with Biber optics as well. I did a similar install for class lights using Fiber Optics and a single LED. You can slightly drill into the LED and glue the Fiber into the hole with CA then run the fiber where you want. I hope this helps.

Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks for the feedback!

That is an intersting idea.

We cannot offer advice on how to wire LEDs to a decoder that we do not make as we are not familiar with all of their designs, but if you want advice on mounting the LEDs to the model George may have some advice. You can email him at support@soundtraxx.com

look into the weller wtp90. different from what george uses but its amazing

ChipQuik from digikey works great.

I've always found having full output allows for the most flexibility. I've got some LED's that require 470 ohm resistors and some that go all the way up to 5.6k ohm resistors.

Mike, when you upgrade consider an 21PNEM8 decoder and a Decoder Buddy. The Decoder Buddy has all the resistors onboard and is available from NixTrainz with 1K or custom with resistor values of your choice on each of the 8 outputs. It makes a very slick upgrade package.

The problem with built-in resistors is that they take away some of the freedom for modelers. Everyone is going to have a different opinion about how bright they want the lights and if we add built-in resistors not everyone will be happy with the value we choose.