5" WALMART NEON MOD- COMPLETE guide to connecting

UPDATED!: WALMART NEON MOD- COMPLETE guide to connecting

In an effort to avoid paying $25 a piece for blue cold cathode 5"-ers for the front grill of my comp I decided to pick up a $12 Walmart blue 5" neon and give it a go. Never having soldered before and never having the guts to do any kind of electrical work this was quite the nerve racking mod for me but I did it and I'm here to post pics and instructions so that anyone and everyone can light up their case in 15min flat. If I can do this, anyone with half a brain can do this.

*DISCLAIMER, do this at your own risk, I am in no way responsible for any damage you do to your comp cause you following my instructions*

FIRST, go to walmart nearest you and get this (see below) brand of neon. They had blue and purple at mine and like all kinds of diff lengths. MAKE SURE the package says 12V DC!! Kinda nice how that works out perfect for comps too.



SECOND, take out the neon, locate the cigarette adapter and get a phillips head screw-driver, remove that cover.

THIRD, once you get the cover off you SHOULD see two white wires (as I did and seen below), going to a spring with a fuse (thats the 12V) and going to the outter metal strip (thats the ground).





FOURTH, Locate a power connector (I had an extra laying around), and solder the yellow 12V wire to the white wire that was connected to the fuse/spring. Solder the black to the white wire that was connected to the outter ground and cover in electrical tape!

FIFTH, you are ready to close the cover (CAREFUL NOT TO CRIMP WIRES) and screw cover back on.

SIXTH, Remove that pesky cover and dumb blue strip. I kept the protective tube surrounding the light because I can be a klutz sometimes. To keep the neon from falling out I sealed the one end with electrical tape and it holes really well (see pic).





FINALLY, TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER, plug in the connector, turn on the comp, flip the ON/OFF switch to on and BINGO.... (see pic below)



Neons may not be as bright as cold caths but at $12 a piece I don't mind buying a few to get better spread around those corners that it would need two caths anyway. Like I said, its really nice to have that 12V DC all over the box, instills confidence that everything should work. Hope you all enjoyed this simple but exciting mod. Save a few bucks, have a little fun with the old soldering gun... Probably splice/solder a on-off switch in tomorrow or something. This is too addicting

More modding to come, got a secret weapon to post soon

has anyone seen RED NEONs at their Walmart? How about RED 5" neons? I can't find red in any of my area stores. hmmm

have you tried Autozone, or PEP boys?...the ones near here seem only to carry purple, blue, and blacklight. though the lady there said they could order red or green for me (i was looking for green....) they DID have Red EL Cable...so i bought some, so when the MOD bug strikes..i'll have something to do

LOL, I am probably going to get some EL today, what do I need to know about hooking that up? I've heard they use 5V inverters? Do the car EL's already have those? I hate electricity, well kinda ;-)

h0mersimps0n said:

LOL, I am probably going to get some EL today, what do I need to know about hooking that up? I've heard they use 5V inverters? Do the car EL's already have those? I hate electricity, well kinda ;-)

Click to expand...

Just a recomendation: use heatshrink over your solder joints instead of electrical tape, Heatshrink looks better and is more durable.

If your are one of those people who cant stand soldering go to radioshack and get some crimp on insulated buttconnectors to connect your wires:


BTW: looks great h0mersimps0n. Soon as i get my watercooling in I think I may make a trip down to walmart.

h0mersimps0n said:

LOL, I am probably going to get some EL today, what do I need to know about hooking that up? I've heard they use 5V inverters? Do the car EL's already have those? I hate electricity, well kinda ;-)

Click to expand...

Yea...when you buy EL cable kits...whether at a CAR site/store or on a MOD site..theu will come with the inverters...tho only thing you need to add is a Molex connecter(in some cases) and a switch if you want to be able to turn it off (Highly recommended)

thanks, got all the stuff today. Tomorrow will be a long fun day of adding two more neons, mounting my new 12" cold cath (frozencpu.com- they are 30min from my house), and filling my keyboard with two 5" EL cables (from walmart).

Should I post pics tomorrow night when I finish or these mods pretty over done and not worth wasting your time...

and yes, the nice thing about the EL/neon devices for cars I got from walmart is that they all have the proper 12V transformers (whatever) added so soldering a molex is no prob. Tomorrow is gonna be fun

Now just gotta get my window cut out...

wow thats cool i got to go walmart and pick up a few many thanks

OK, Loved the Neons so much bought two more AND two EL cables. Gonna spend the rest of the day finishing up the project. So my case will have three neons and one 12" cold cath. Boy I spent 5 hours soldering those three neons up to run together correctly. I'll post more pics later if anyone's interested.

Posting pics soon of the finished product. Anyone else try this mod since I've posted? Anyone else just plain done this mod in the past?

i did the mod with one of the blue 12" neons from walmart. similar setup not to hard to configure.

OK guys and gals, here are my walmart neons installed and in action... even the keyboard EL wire came from walmart car section...

here we go...











niiiice

sweet i love the key board mod i'm sick of typing in the dark when its late. lol got to get me some of those

Not to burst your bubble, but the EL will do little more than help you locate your keyboard with the lights out. Unfortunately I found out afterward that EL has little utility (to my disappointment after 8hrs of prying out keys from the MFing board) and serves mainly as astheticly pleasing. Its ok, it looks cool anyway... I'm working on ideas for top lighing the keyboard as well as lighting my switches on the front of my case. In the dark I keep having to fumble around looking for them. My uncle has a few $100,000 stereo setup that has some neat lighting of switches, I might duplicate the idea and see what I can come up with... I also have an extra EL lying around that I want to get going eventually... ideas ideas..

thanks for the comments, keep em coming!

do those neons get hot?

not at all, the three have been one for four days and I just checked them, not even warm. Remember they are mounted inside the plastic tubing still too, don't know if that makes a difference...

one last bump then I'll let this thread die until I get my window cut and installed...

I have a couple of quesitons about some of these case mods that you all are making:

1. What kind of tools are you using to cut out the windows?

2. What do you hook up the neon lights to? and were do you guys get these on and off switches for the lights?

3. is it hard to connect the lights and stuff?

Matt I don't have time to write you a detailed message at the moment, PM me and I will answer all your questions and whatever you want to know about my project tomorrow...

ok question answering time MATT

1.) DREMEL or jig saw- I hear a lot of people rough out their design with a jig then dremel to clean up...

2.) If you look at some of my pics above, I soldered a molex connector to the cigarrette adaptor, then that just plugs into a free power cable from your PSU. The switches are rocker switches with two positions that can be picked up for a few bucks from radio shack.

3.) If I can do it, then even a one-eyed monkey with one arm tied behind his back can do it...