Making your own LED headlights?

[Trollhole]

ANybody ever tried making their own.

You can buy the parts fairly cheap.

Cree LEDs - Led Driver - Led Fixtures - Led Optics - Luxeon LEDs - LED Supply.com

From what I have seen most are made from Luxeon Star III's

 

[george_tlc]

Headlights? Car or on your head?

These days the Cree & Seoul are the pick of the crop for LED lighting. The Luxeon Rebel is nice for very small projects.

cheers,
george.

 

[Trollhole]

Headlights? Car or on your head?

These days the Cree & Seoul are the pick of the crop for LED lighting. The Luxeon Rebel is nice for very small projects.

cheers,
george.

No, no, no. That has been done many times. I was talking about off road lights. Like these guys.

LED Lighting Products | Vision X Offroad Lighting Products - 1.800.994.4460

http://www.visionxoffroad.com/led/xmitter/

 

[george_tlc]

No, no, no. That has been done many times. I was talking about off road lights. Like these guys.

LED Lighting Products | Vision X Offroad Lighting Products - 1.800.994.4460

Xmitter LED Off Road Light Bars - Brighter than HID | Vision X Offroad Lighting - 1.800.994.4460

Yeah, not a problem to make your own EXCEPT for the housing. The LEDs and electronics are easy. Lots of optics to choose from these days. The issue is the housing, water proof, snazzy looking etc etc.

I sell a lot of my drivers to folk that build bike lights etc. 3 x 3W premium bin Seouls with appropriate optics put out a lot of light. Put more of them in a housing and you definitely have some serious light output, especially with LEDs now at or beyond 100 lumens/watt. The housings are always the 'tricky' part, unless you have access to CNC, plastics etc.

The new P7 or MC-E are awesome light generators too!

cheers,
george.

 

[ducktapeguy]

Yeah, not a problem to make your own EXCEPT for the housing. The LEDs and electronics are easy. Lots of optics to choose from these days. The issue is the housing, water proof, snazzy looking etc etc.

Don't forget about heatsinking. Heat is the enemy of LEDS, you'd have to find a way to conduct all that heat away from the dies.

I've thought about using arrays of of LED's for vehicle lighting, but cost/effectiveness ratio just isn't very good at this point. Even the latest high power LED's aren't that much more efficient than a regular halogen lightbulb, the main advantage is durability. And with HID kits going for less than $100 now, it'd be hard to get anywhere near that kind of performance at that price level.

Also, the color rendition of LED's is pretty horrible, but maybe that's just personal preference. If you've ever driven a car with really blue HID's, you'll know what I'm talking about. Even though it may look brighter, it's more strain on the eyes.