Modding The Ring Of Light

~~LGC~~ · 01-12-2007, 10:19 PM

I do not take an resposibilty for your actions at recreating this moddification and hear by am showing you how to if you so choose.

Tools suggested / required.

Magnifying Glass
Tweezers
Soldering Iron - mine is 15 watt
solder - i used .022 dia
new tip - it always easier if you use a nice new tip

My LED's were ordered from jade-swords.com and would recomend them. Maybe i can get some discounts for the promotion

Otherwise you could get them anywhere else you wanted. The ring of light SMD's are 1204 right angle, but the ones from jade swords works just fine if you turn them on their side like i did. The center one is a 0603.

Open up your xbox using one of the many tutorials available.

Flip off the little plastic piece covering the LED's. It just snaps off, there are 2 tabs holding it one, one at the top and one at the bottom.

Unscrew the 3 screws holding it on with a T8 screwdriver.

The whole thing just pulls off, see the little plug it goes into on the bottom left, just grab the whole board and pull it out.

Now you should have the board that looks kind of like this, mine has the lights already replaced.

Your LED's will be right angle ones that look like this

You will need to desolder the old LED's with your desoldering braid. Just roll a little bit out and sit it next to one side of the LED and put your soldering iron on top of it for a second and it should start to pull the solder up into the braid. Do it on both sides and on the back of the LED too, there is some solder there. After a while you shouldnt see any solder there anymore and shoule be able to come off. Most of them just start to move around and just come off while your desoldering it, if not grab your tweezers and try pulling it a bit.

After you get the LED off, it will look like this.

Now if you got the same LED's that i used, then you can solder them on the same way i did mine. If you got the right angle ones, just put them on exactly how the old ones were. You should put your soldering iron on one of the metal pads, then put your solder against the same pad close to your iron and it should fill up the pad with a nice amount of solder, do the same for the other pad the led is going on. You can add a lil solder to your LED as well or just hold it in place where it should go with your tweezers and then move your soldering iron around on the solder you just put down on a pad and where the solder will go on the led, and it should move the solder against the led. You may need to put some more solder on while your doing this as well, you can put your soldering iron against the led where it will be soldered to heat it up and then put some solder on there and it should connect with the pad as well. Here is a diagram to show how they should go for the ones i used from jade-swords. The blue circle shows which pads to solder the LED's to, the green triangle shows the direction, the led should have the same triangle, just make them going the way i have them in the picture.

Here are some pics of how it should look.

A final overview of how it should look.

Now just put everything back on there and test it out. I would recommend maybe installing one LED and push it back onto the 360 to test it out quickly to make sure it lights up, then go back and finish the rest of them.

This is how it should look once your finished, color depending on what LED's you used of course. I used the purple ones.

If you would like to add a pair of 2nd LED's for the error light, you will need to run a short wire or something to reach accross to the 2nd led "the pink line" and connect it to the positive side of the 2nd LED. I think the easiest way to do this is to solder the wire to the side opposite the arrow first, then put some solder down on the 2nd pad that isnt used, and put the LED straight up and down, so the wire is at the top and the arrow is facing down toward the board. Solder it to that pad and it should be good to go, otherwise you may be able to face it away in the other direction. If i get some extra cash to get some 2nd LED's then i can put them on and have some pics. Unless someone wants to donate some