LED Headlights - True High Power HID alternative
LED light pipes provide better and much more efficient
light source then HID or regular autoative light bulbs.
Over some time we been experimenting by building our own
true LED headlight for our prototyping cars. Finally we
have something to show and good thing is that you can
DIY too if you wnat to.
If you look at modern car they all start using LEDs,
especially after new Audi introduced their LED eyebrowes
(well I've been driving with my eyebrowes way before
Audi did their concept, so now its time to get ahead of
them once again) The LED pipe that we are building is
highly energy efficient. For 8 Watt (700mA @ 12V) you
can get the same amount of light tha you get vith
conventional 55W light bulbs. Wow no more headlight
overheating and so much energy is being saved. I can
even say you can make your car go go GREEN. Well you
will green car concept is debatable but you got the
idea.
LED headlight for car can be an energu saver or it can
be serious alternative to most expansive HID kits! Right
now we are experimenting with super high power LED
matrix that eats 2 Amps and gives 55W of ambient
temperature (just like regular light bulb you have in
the car) BUT the
light output is 5 to 2 times higher that just about anu
HID kit you can get!!! Basically if we look
at light units, regulat bulb emits 800 units that
wahy we have in our regular LED pipe, but our super
bright matrix gives us value of 5000. Oh yes avarage HID
ranges around 1500-2000 units. So really out LED
headlight matrix give us what should be called a
"projectror". Combine it with focusing lense and you can
light up whole higway. Soon we will have the kit ready
for you guys to test out. If you like to be speacial we
can sale you componests we are playing around with and
you can do you own headlight without waiting on our
developments.
Besides saving power and geting more light out of you
LED car kits you also avoiding most of the legal
restrictions. To our interpretation law buns aftermarket
HID kits installed on our cars, well law does not say
anything about LED aftermarket headlights, so we
probably can drive them and easily defend any tikets...
Do check you local laws just in case before you put
something 2x powerful then HID (Disclamer: I'm not your
legal advisor so you responsible for your actions, we
only provide technical information)
Basic Parts:
1. LED Matrix
2. Radiator
3. Lense
4. LED Controller
5. Voltage Regulator
To build your own LED pipe or whole headlight you will
need at least 1 led matrix diode. If you good with
installation and fabrication you might be done with just
and emitter but it is much smarter to build whole pipe.
What is LED pipe? LED Pipe is an assambly of the LED +
Lense + other required components (most of the time
housed in the pipe or cilinder)
So, if you have high power LED it will overheat and can
burn so you need to get heatsink or radiator. Any PC
heatsink with fun will do the job, so you dont really
need any thing special there. Just attach LED matrix to
heatsink and start the fun. In our case w used 4x4 cm
fun and heatsink. This is good anough to keep 700-1000mA
led cool. Bigger once might need 80mm fun or something
like that.
Next logical part is lense. You need lense to focuse
ligh coming out of LED bulb. Basically led blasts the
light everywhere in 120 degree direction, and we don't
really need that for the car so we will take all light
an focude it up straigh, in this way we will cover more
distance and light will be more intence. So we are
"projecting" the light. Thats why headlights are called
projector headlights.
When selectin lense you need something that can survive
heat, at least like 80 Celcius (more is better as you
dont want you lence to blow out) Oh you need convex
lense about 45 degrese with shortest focopoint.
Once you done with lense you will need LED controller.
If you have straight 12V LED you can coonect it
directly, but car voltage and curent is never steady so
you will kill your lights too soon with that. Best way
to keep your LED healthy is to limit current to the
value it is designed (ex: 700mA). Less curen that led
requires will dim it and too much curent or voltage will
blow it, so be carefull as you dont want to burn your
$100 bulb. So to get your voltage and curent right
you can use led controller or resistor. Use Ohms Law to
calulate resitor valuse if you wnat to go cheap way, but
if you wan to be fancy you can use controller.
Right now we are working on a device that will be able
to controll headlights + will have full color RGB strips
support so that you can go disco inside you car as we
have a DMX option to anilze audio and build proper
colors for the frequancies. We can also dim LED lights
or use them as police strobe light. Basically it will be
universal device that can turn your car in a xmass tree
:) If you interested about controler pre-release
versions you can contact me through support page.
 Final
note for this page... different LEDs light up
differently, and unfortunaltly they expansive they are
the more light they emit. We compered many LEDs and even
though they all looked the same and had same parameters
apperantly once cost about $100 are the once we liked
more. Well there are other once that are even more
expansive. For example to build Audi like adheasive eye
browes you need high powe strip wich cost about $35 per
foot and you need at least 4 feet (well depands on your
car) You can get the same time of strip elsewhere which
technically shold work even better as documetation says
it emits more lightm BUT in real life it does not,
sure it cost 2 times less then real reputable LED device
Any way if you are interested in our LED projects, if
you need few LED matrix to play around or you want beta
versions of our controllers please contact us. And if
you are a store owner, integrator or reseler then you
definetly should contact us ;-)
Below is small picture gallery of our existing progres.
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