LED interior light replacement help

[energie]

Hi, so I was looking at replacing my interior lights with LED's, saw some how to's on making your own but i was curious if these ones would work and if i needed any relays or anything for these to work properly?
thanks

 

[PedroDaGr8]

Avoid the ones with 5mm LEDs like that. THey don't have enough metal to serve as a proper heat sink (considering they are not Voltage regulated). This would lead to an early death of the LEDs.

Superbrightleds tends to have much better options. Surface mount LEDs (which can then use the circuit board as a heatsink) with built in buck regulators.

Just my $0.02

THat being said, I'm getting ready to do a massive LED conversion in my CRV. Map light, Dome light, add a red or orange led reading light, cargo light, add some reading lights for the back seat and assorted other lights.

I will be designing each of these from scratch and using a Voltage regulator to ensure they last for YEARS to come.

 

[energie]

Hmm, good to know. I don't mind tinkering around with breadboards, and regulators, led's, soldering, and all that stuff but I havent done much in that dept. not saying i cant, im decent with electrical stuff, but i'd need like a list of what to get assuming there was a website that you could buy all the bulk parts of or something. there isnt much in this city for LED stuff except for maybe radio shack

 

[XLT]

Not hard to do at all. I got the bread board from radioshack and got my leds from ebay which came with resistors for truck applications. I have had them in for about a year now and all of them still light up. Plus do some searching. There are plenty of write ups on how to do this conversion.
Heres a good start. http://www.explorerforum.com/forums//showthread.php?t=225698

 

[energie]

in that write up he used 55,000mcd led's, i found 100 5mm led's with 13300-15000 mcd should i find better ones? or will these work? im looking to buy more bulk than getting like 10 or 20

 

[XLT]

in that write up he used 55,000mcd led's, i found 100 5mm led's with 13300-15000 mcd should i find better ones? or will these work? im looking to buy more bulk than getting like 10 or 20

You will need brighter ones then the 15000mcd. I would try to get atleast 55,000mcd. I bought a pack of 50 on ebay with resistors and i think i used every one. Mind you i have a sport so i might have one fewer overhead light.

 

[PedroDaGr8]

Hehe, first off as I mentioned to energie. No offense, but there is no way in hell those are 55k mcd. No way. Likely the seller is either quoting what was told to them by the Chinese manufacturer or they themselves are manipulating the results.

mcd is a much more easily manipulated value than lumen, as it is roughly lumens per unit area. So a seller can take an exceptionally bright hotspot, to find the mcd. Then tell you it is a 55000 mcd LED with a 20 degree beam, when in reality the 55k mcd is only for a tiny 1 degree spot. This is assuming the ones you used are the 55kmcd 5mm LEDs that I found online. If they were being honest and were recording the 20 degree output, it works out to around 5 Lumens of output. Which is an efficiency of 75lm/w (which is a REALLY good efficiency). In a 5mm LED not going to happen. Especially not at that current level. Most high efficiency LEDs achieve their high efficiencies at currents of 300mA or more. For example, the max right now is around 180lm/w, and is at 350mA. At 20-30mA, efficiency is around 20lm/W.

That being said, even at those inflated numbers as you saw in your case. These are PLENTY bright. Just know that some sellers quoting 12-18k mcd are likely telling closer to the truth but the unfortunate thing is you don't know. Due to this manipulation the quoted intensity values are more or less worthless (except for comparing within a sellers own stock).

 

[XLT]

Hehe, first off as I mentioned to energie. No offense, but there is no way in hell those are 55k mcd. No way. Likely the seller is either quoting what was told to them by the Chinese manufacturer or they themselves are manipulating the results.

Do you actually have experience with ebay leds? If you search the forum you will find plenty of people who have boughten leds of ebay with no regrets. Even MustangP51 bought leds from ebay for many of his projects.

mcd is a much more easily manipulated value than lumen, as it is roughly lumens per unit area. So a seller can take an exceptionally bright hotspot, to find the mcd. Then tell you it is a 55000 mcd LED with a 20 degree beam, when in reality the 55k mcd is only for a tiny 1 degree spot. This is assuming the ones you used are the 55kmcd 5mm LEDs that I found online. If they were being honest and were recording the 20 degree output, it works out to around 5 Lumens of output. Which is an efficiency of 75lm/w (which is a REALLY good efficiency). In a 5mm LED not going to happen. Especially not at that current level. Most high efficiency LEDs achieve their high efficiencies at currents of 300mA or more. For example, the max right now is around 180lm/w, and is at 350mA. At 20-30mA, efficiency is around 20lm/W.

That being said, even at those inflated numbers as you saw in your case. These are PLENTY bright. Just know that some sellers quoting 12-18k mcd are likely telling closer to the truth but the unfortunate thing is you don't know. Due to this manipulation the quoted intensity values are more or less worthless (except for comparing within a sellers own stock).

Right there is a glass is half empty answer. I have ordered plenty of leds off ebay. THe mcd scale must be fairly accurate that they use and from my experience they dont seem to decieve. If they did decieve you there feedback would show. I have bought leds off mulitiple sellers and everytime i have not doubted the mcd scale based on brightness of led. I think if you buy from a seller with good ratings you should be fine. Lumens can be easily manupilated as well. The lumens produced at the led are always higher then what actually comes out the front of the device like in flashlights for example. The origanl jetbeam m1x claim a 700lm led but by the time it made it out the front (otf) of the light it was only pushing around 450lm. Thats a huge loss!

To the op. Its your choice. If you want to do your project cheaply i would highly recommend ebay. When i get stuff shipped from china it usually takes a week. Compared other sites selling leds its cheaper. And lot cheaper then radioshack by far. But some still perfer ordering from an actuall site which is good as well. Food for thought. I would say its a good chance that the sellers on ebay and those who have their own website probably get the leds from the same source.

 

[PedroDaGr8]

Right there is a glass is half empty answer. I have ordered plenty of leds off ebay. THe mcd scale must be fairly accurate that they use and from my experience they dont seem to decieve. If they did decieve you there feedback would show. I have bought leds off mulitiple sellers and everytime i have not doubted the mcd scale based on brightness of led. I think if you buy from a seller with good ratings you should be fine. Lumens can be easily manupilated as well. The lumens produced at the led are always higher then what actually comes out the front of the device like in flashlights for example. The origanl jetbeam m1x claim a 700lm led but by the time it made it out the front (otf) of the light it was only pushing around 450lm. Thats a huge loss!

To the op. Its your choice. If you want to do your project cheaply i would highly recommend ebay. When i get stuff shipped from china it usually takes a week. Compared other sites selling leds its cheaper. And lot cheaper then radioshack by far. But some still perfer ordering from an actuall site which is good as well. Food for thought. I would say its a good chance that the sellers on ebay and those who have their own website probably get the leds from the same source.

Call it as you wish, I just speak from my personal experience, having made a good number of LED drop-ins for others. I have purchased supposed 20k mcd LEDs that were noticeably brighter than other supposed 42k mcd LEDs on ebay. As for ratings, how many people buy multiple bulk quantities of LEDs to compare. Let alone take the time to compare. They just care that they are bright. End of story. Additionally, you have to remember there are only 5-10 actual major Chinese LED manufacturers. So the vendors you see on ebay are often times getting the same LEDs (and factory quoted ratings) from the bulk resellers (of which there are 100s if not thousands in China).

What you say it true about lumens as well, unfortunately. This though is why when the stats matter I tend to trust reliable companies specs (ie SSC, Nichia, Cree, Toshiba, Philips Lumileds, etc.) versus unknown companies in China (not saying China stuff is inherently bad, just unknown). In this case, stats don't matter as much and you having experience with a particular LED is more important.

By the way, according to several of my suppliers, shipping from China may take a bit longer than normal right now as China Post has been swamped with shipments to the US and has been running at 100% capacity for the past few weeks.

 

[RickOTR]

Hi, so I was looking at replacing my interior lights with LED's, saw some how to's on making your own but i was curious if these ones would work and if i needed any relays or anything for these to work properly?
thanks

Just bought four of these in place of my sunvisor lights and let me tell you they will blind you. I thought the wifes eyes where going to pop-out when she open the visor. Had to turn them in a little bit to keep from gettong blinded to death. Two of the LEDS in my map light have died and am looking for other solutions... I wonder if these would work.