SIGH

They just never give up.....



If the above picture does not work, go here.....

http://www.hidplanet.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2297

I have the 24 LED MAtrix bulbs in my Crown vic, 2 per lense and those work nice on my car. These SHOULD be even better. They dont havbe them for 3156(7) sockets yet though from what they told me about 3 weeks ago. They said expect them in the 1st or 2nd week of january.

S.O.

Well see here I disagree. I purchased one to test. You have to remember that they use 18 superflux LED's.. the same used in OEM Automotive applications. Simply dismissing them isn't a good way to determine if they are any good. I actually think they have potential... either way we will see. I will test them against regular incandescent and also against my custom LED tails that I made using 108 superflux LED's. I actually anticipate better results than you think.

Just a little note here. Distiquishing between the original Lumileds superflux and the Taiwanese copy is very hard. They simply look identical. However lumileds version does NOT come in white. None of them are labled. What I have seen so far in marketing is that Lumiled is guaranteed mentioned if their original products are used. I am sure Lumiled is ready to kill copycats with false claims.

Well obviously they are not Lumileds. I'm not saying they are. That would be too expensive and honestly I doubt the company who makes these cares enough to use Lumileds. Still, decent results can be achieved. And, Lumileds isn't the only company that has it's superflux LED's use in OEM applications. HP Snap-LED's are used more often than Lumileds.

As far as I know, Snap-LED is a Lumiled marketing name, and since Lumiled is HP/Philips joint venture, HP will be seen as well. Snap-LEDS are mounted by a solderless "clinch method", which makes high volume serial producion cheap. Snap LEDS are not ment for soldering, so they aren't really useful for us retrofitters.

Lumileds do have this cool 3" diameter pre mounted with 6 snap leds premounted with a simple driver for automotive use:

http://lumileds.com/pdfs/protected/DS10.PDF
They are $7 each when buying 100 from Future electronics.

This is most likely what sits inside many 4" diameter truck stop/tail/turn lights.

Good find. I stand corrected.

I emailed the seller a month or two ago,asking if he'd refund me if those bulbs weren't any brighter than filament. He said he would...but I'll wait until that guy on HIDPlanet actually tests them.

That "guy" on HIDplanet... is me .. I should get them monday or tuesday. I'll let everyone know.

so, how do they look? :D

For the best, lets assume they are Lumiled Superflux (they probably are not). There is 21 LEDs on this matrix bulb, and average output of a Lumiled Superflux is about 6 lumens, if driven at 70mA. 21 x 6 lumens gives 126 red only lumens.

There is 300-400 white lumens in an incadescent bulb. But that is white light, so we have to subtract green and blue light. As a very rough estimate 45% is red, 45% is green and 10% is blue. Green and blue together makes 55%, so very roughly we get 135 - 180 lumens.

From a light source perspective, it should be slightly dimmer.

Then comes the disadvantage of having light out of focus. I am referring to the fact that lamp is designed to have light source in one centered spot, about 3x8mm. A LED matrix bulb may hit reflector and lens inefficiently, and output will be lower. I estimate that such losses could be 5-30%.

Conclusion would be that using just one would in most cases be to dimm, two of them should do the trick. It will probably look bad with two in a round tail light. A squared tail light would probably look better with 2 LED matrix bulbs in them.

The company making these is supposed to have an even higher powered on comming out soon. Have an e-mail from him saying so. About 50% or so more powerful than these ones. I told him though, that for cars with clear corners that they need to get rid of the green circut board that is showing and either cover it up, color it or use something else.

S.O.

I've got a set of LED lights made by APC in the rear taillights of my '79 Bronco, which I use exclusively off-road. I bought them thinking that they might be less susceptible to failure due to vibration and they seem to be holding up quite well.

The lamp in which the LED bulb was demonstrated uses direct optics. This means that the lens design anticipates that the light will be emitted from a point source, typically a filament. While that is not really a point source, it is small enough that the lamp designer can make the optical package achieve the required beam pattern. The LED bulb is not a point source. The surfaces from which light is emitted achieve a large right circular cylinder. The optics can not achieve a complying beam given that the light emitting surface is so large.

you know what's sad tho? i don't even dare post this over at my car club's forum. they'll just say its big companies like hella trying to scare off smaller companies and such. and still proceed to think swapping over to their 3157 replacement led lamps is the shizzle... shakes head

Some never see the light.....

Is Hella really just trying to sell its products? Sure, but Hella has been in business for more than 100 years because it sells products that the public wants and appreciates. Look at Hella's website and all the things that it does to learn more about seeing at night, the testing it does, its light tunnel photographs (the light tunnel is really cool, it can make real fog in there! I've been there!) and all the other things that it does to make better lighting for its customers. Then compare it to the websites of those who make less substantial and maybe complying lamps. Which would you rather have on your vehicles, lamps from people who just want your money, or lamps from people who care about its customers?