And before the light police get their toes all curled up, NO, we’re not going to drive into the CG and light you up all night. This is a dimmable area light for boondocking, ala Quartzsite, the beach, etc.
It sports 12ea. 1W Luxeon Amber LED’s distributed on a polished aluminum heatsink stood off of the rear fixture ~1/4”. There are three sets of 4 LEDS wired in series (~3v ea.) that keeps the dropping resistor value and wasted current to a minimum. The current 1157 that’s in there is also on an analog dimmer, that hopefully I can get to play nice with the LED’s, because I didn’t really want to introduce additional RFI with a PWM dimmer unless necessary. The dimmer takes the LED’s from a faint glow, all the way to full bright, and fairly linearly on the knob too..
LEDZILLA looks like it has the same throw and illumination as the stock 1157 lamp, but a much much flatter and even spread across the area with no 1157 type “hot spots”, because the LED’s are evenly distributed throughout the fixture, rather than a single pinpoint at the 1157 filament (I'll do a real lightmeter test in the future). It also has a significant improvement on its downcast illumination as the lens cover is over an inch tall and the 120+ degree illumination of the LED’s hit the side cover lens’ing nicely. The 1157 was basically useless if you decided to use the BBQ right under it… Not anymore, and man is it pretty to look at.
The whole point of this was to see what could be done with these scare lights that are just flat ugly, lousy at overall illumination, hot, and waste energy. This one draws ~600ma. @ 12.5v (I goosed it up a tad from the pic), and because I’m not using a DC-DC switcher (yet), need to leave enough headroom that they can handle 14v+ supplies when the charger is on and survive.
With the drive backed-off for pictures, there is a beautiful multi-point star pattern across the lens. The ENTIRE lens is used this time.
Installed on the coach. The dimmer is in the entertainment center
One mod to this is to cut a strip of Aluminum, mirror polish it, and mount it across the top of the cover in a 1/2 arc to capture whatever light is leaking out the top and hopefully reflect it back down.
Now.... Where to go?
(edit: changed pic)
* This post was
edited 03/20/12 07:28pm by SCVJeff *
In case anyone needs an inexpensive PWM for LED or other control, I have used this one: http://www.ebay.ca/itm/12V-Wireless-LED-lamp-Light-Single-Controller-Dimmer-/130579028896?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e671ddba0
It uses MOSFET's for control and has a weather tight remote fob for on/off, higher/lower intensity. I use one for controllmotorcycleycel heated grips and others for LED and incandescent light control. Thought it might be useful given the modest cost and that the remote fob allows mounting the controller without having to wire.
The outside ring came from All Electronics, but when I decided I wanted to go for 12, ALL had sold the remainder of their stock, and there are no more available... anywhere. So the center 4 came from LED Supply. The "Rebels" are the current replacements for the Stars, probably a tad more robust, but the spec's are essentially identical. The thing about the Star's is that they are domed a tad higher and spill lots of light over the side. I was gonna work on taking a pic of the pattern on the lens, but the fixture is getting a clear coat tonight instead
The plate is hand cut out of a piece of sheet and polished with the same stuff I use on the coach wheels
Norm: I saw those, but having a remote only made me nervous about losing it. Then there's still the problem of errant RFI. When we're out in Quartzsite, the local FM oldie's station is on in the background, and as far as we are out of town, any RFI would kill reception. Guess I could repackage it and wrap the I/O with Ferrite beads.
Very cool! I was wondering if anyone had the ambition to build their own LED lights but didn't think it would be LEDzilla, lol. Good on 'ya for building the beast.
RVUSA wrote: can you get a pic showing the lighting at night? maybe from 50 feet or so away. So we can see how it throws light.
That's going to be a very difficult picture to shoot because I can't use any automatic camera whatsoever: ie all cam phones or point n' shoots. If I do they will try and automatically set exposures, ISO, etc. and make each picture something it's not.
I need to take my 35MM out and pick a manual exposure that works with the stock lamp and LEDZILLA and do an A/B between the two with the exact same exposure (obviously on a tripod).
* This post was
edited 03/26/12 11:39pm by SCVJeff *
westend wrote: Very cool! I was wondering if anyone had the ambition to build their own LED lights but didn't think it would be LEDzilla, lol. Good on 'ya for building the beast.
And there's room on the plate for more (in chunks of 4) if I can figure out how to keep the heat down
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