So my lights are finally finished, and this morning I got up all happy to finally put them in.
Just for you who don't know about my project, I have retrofitted a Philips D2S into the H9 Projectors. Along with this, I have made Halos around the projectors as well.
Well, everything is fine except the Halos now. I used 2 LEDs per Halo ring, and have wired a 680 ohm resistor on EACH L.E.D.
When I test fired it using a Battery Charger, all worked fine. But when I wired the Halos to my parking lamp harness, they would not light up. I checked all the connections, and all were sound.
I brought the lights back into the garage and test fired them again, and they worked with the battery charger.
I may be wrong with my assumption, but do I need to use a lower resistor? I cannot explain what else could be causing this problem. My thinking is that the battery charger has enough juice to make the 680 ohms work, but that the parking lights probably do not put out that much juice...
What do you think the problem is guys? Am I on the right track or am I waaaay off? Please let me know, because as of now, I no longer can drive the car until the project is finished...
"A 680 ohm resistor will limit the current to a safe level although I would probably use a 1000 ohm in a vehicle because the charging system voltage would be higher than 12 volts. Any resistor between 680 and 4700 ohms would probably work fine. Choose a resistor with a power rating greater than or equal to the power dissipation given by the calculator above."
Seems to me that I followed all the rules in the book. It has to be that the parking lamps use less voltage... I am really dumbfounded by this!
I have that kind rings on my project headlamp
when I wiring them with the parking light same thing
happened and it's seems like some time they will light up, but some time they won't , I have check them on the battery before I put them on my car. don't know why.
they are after market headlamp made for civic, the rings come with the headlamp.
some one know why?
1. General battery chargers can be dangerous to in conjunction with electronics. A typical battery charger gives out unfiltered DC. Try look at output voltage in an oscilliscope and you will see a sinus wave pulses, where the negative ones have been turned up. Frequency is around 100Hz. The peaks of the waves are maybe 15-17V. This is can be enough to partially or completly destroy 12V equipment. The moral is: Never use a battery charger for anything else than to charge batteries. Go and by a laboratory power supply for $50-100 if u need 12V test power. http://www.mpja.com/listitems.asp?dept=2&main=1
2. As I have described on the LED page, all LEDs in a car needs a driver curcuit to be able to withstand surges and keep constant light output, regardless of RPM.
I'm not sure if Josh used drivers in his Contour taillights (or Mut in his Accord).
My question: Do the Grote LEDs or any other LED trayler lights need to use drivers?
Or do you think they just can work fine with out them?
I have LED sidemarker lights; they run OK with power from the parking lights, no drivers or external resistors. Maybe Milan hooked up the LEDs to the turn signal feeds (mistakes happen).
Grote LED and other pre assemebled truck lights for direct plug have a built in current limiter/voltage regulator. When selecting LEDs, the important part is as always: read and understand datasheet. If there is not any available, do not buy them.
Same thing with hooking up to car. Unless you have wiring diagram, comprehensive mesaurements have to be done in the curcuit first to cover off odd situations. So far LED clusters are expensive, so it better to be safe than sorry.
Have you tried switiching the polarity of the connections to the LEDs? That might work.
I used a few blue LEDs with 680ohm resistors to change the color of some of my dashboard switches a while back... and it worked with no problem. The resistor value was right on target.
This is why I went with Grote pre-fab units in the first place. Because I didn't want to engineer all that fancy matched driver stuff. Grote units are total plug-n-play units, with all parts and LEDs themselves tested in rigorous environments to insure that they don't blow-out in hot summer temperatures, and they put out a DOT legal pattern with DOT legal intensity (not saying that DOT is the God of all standards or anything, just that they figure these are bright enough to meet standards for intensity)
Well thanks for all your help, but only hours after I posted the original message, I figured out what to do.
I just removed one of the resistors, and now the Halos work great.
On that note, my headlights are finally finished, and all I can say is WOW!!!
I will be up in Toronto this up coming weekend, or the next one. Herman and I plan on hooking up so that he can take detailed pics of my lights... Can't wait man!
