LED front park lights for Gallardo

Something along these lines?

 

 

Looking good, how hot do the headlamps get?, have they been on long enough for you to know if the heat from the headlamp will cause the plastic casing of the LED's to discolor or melt?

I'm in for a set

More info on this please.... exactly how does it work and where do we get them???

More info on this please.... exactly how does it work and where do we get them???

 

 

Still working on the design at this point Iceman

I was thinking we could get away with using 12MM large dome led that are 15000mcd but maybe we should just go all the way with the 1 watt baby ufo's?

 

http://www.quickar.com/kufo.php?session=

 

Imagine a piece of smoked plexiglass on top of this assembly.

 

15000mcd isn't going to be enough.

 

The daytime running/parking lights on the Audi RS6 are around 500 lumens (10 Osram Golden Dragon LED's @ 50 lumens). You want something like a Luxeon Rebel and a viewing angle maybe around 30-60 degrees. A 145 lumen Rebel (LXML-PWN1-0080) with a 60 degree lens is going to be 175,000mcd. At 30 degrees it's around 675,000mcd. You probably want a neutral white or cool white LED (4000k-5500k or so). 5 of them together, and now you're talking. Bear in mind that a headlight is around 1800-2500 lumens (each side) focused pretty well. For the look shown above, you would probably want 400-500 lumens per side. Combine that with an optic (ideally an elliptical one like a 10mm Carclo 50deg x 10deg) so you aren't throwing too much light up into other cars eyes and you get a nice little parking light and lights up the road on the sides pretty well. A Rebel + Carclo 10mm optic is cheaper than those star LED's too (about $3/ea vs $10/ea).

 

Regardless of the LED used, you will need to mount them to either a well designed FR4 PCB or a metal core PCB and mount that to a heatsink (maybe make the panel out of aluminum, mill some fins in the back and mount them to that). You also need to drive them with a constant current circuit, and ideally have them dim down at night (most CC drivers have a dimming feature), then you could have them go full-bright with the high beams at night. If you drive them just with a resistor, it would generate tons of heat and the brightness will vary as the alternator/battery voltage varies from 11 to 14.5 volts or so. Look into a Buck Puck for driving them. You could probably get pretty good brightness at 0.5A per LED, and run them in series (one string of two, one string of three) and use a pair of buck pucks to drive. The BP has an external dimming input so you can hook them up to the low/high beams and have two brightness levels and get nice visibility in daylight as well as dimmed down at night.

 

Then like you said just slap a piece of tinted 2074 acrylic on the front (2064 might be dark enough) and you're good to go.

 

The OEM washer cover from Lambo is a bit of a complex shape (see image) that has a protrusion on one side that looks like it flips up to expose the mechanism underneath. It looks, unfortunately, like the OEM panel has some curvature across it's surface too unfortunately.

 

I have tons of LED's and optics around my shop if you want something to play around with.

Something along these lines?

 

 

That is very nice. Looks like 5-6 high power LED's with integrated lens. It looks like it's part of the headlight???

 

Looks like a well done piece. Is that your car? Or a P-chop?

Sorry to go OT again but it is somewhat related.

 

Corporate666, do keep us informed on this pls. I am sure that many here are interested.

 

 

I will let you know how it goes.

 

The problem is that to get a mold done, you're looking at around $15,000-20,000USD and that is getting it made by a reputable shop in Taiwan (because it's at least 4 molds - back plate and front lens, and the left and right are different [mirror images of each other]). It could be 6 molds if there is an internal lens like there is on the OEM light, but I think with a good LED design inside, the inner lens is probably not necessary.

 

Honestly, I wouldn't personally be interested in investing the $$ because even if they sold for $500 a pair, you'd need to sell probably 50-70 sets just to get the investment back, and I am not sure there is a big enough market of people willing to pay that.

 

But, I tossed the idea to the manufacturer I use and they are considering it. If they are willing to put the time and money in to do the lens and housing, I will do the electronic and mechanical side. Most likely it would just be a complete LED replacement that totally eliminates all the bulbs on the back and has a triangle/star shaped lights similar to the LP560.

 

It all depends on whether they are willing to make these lights, or alternatively if a Lambo parts shop is interested and thinks they could sell 100+ units, it may work out that way too. I'll keep ya posted!

That is very nice. Looks like 5-6 high power LED's with integrated lens. It looks like it's part of the headlight???

 

Looks like a well done piece. Is that your car? Or a P-chop?

 

That is my car photoshopped unless someone snuck in my garage and installed the new head lights :-)

 

Looks very good by the way.

 

Maybe I should integrate the light this way?

 

 

15000mcd isn't going to be enough.

 

The daytime running/parking lights on the Audi RS6 are around 500 lumens (10 Osram Golden Dragon LED's @ 50 lumens). You want something like a Luxeon Rebel and a viewing angle maybe around 30-60 degrees. A 145 lumen Rebel (LXML-PWN1-0080) with a 60 degree lens is going to be 175,000mcd. At 30 degrees it's around 675,000mcd. You probably want a neutral white or cool white LED (4000k-5500k or so). 5 of them together, and now you're talking. Bear in mind that a headlight is around 1800-2500 lumens (each side) focused pretty well. For the look shown above, you would probably want 400-500 lumens per side. Combine that with an optic (ideally an elliptical one like a 10mm Carclo 50deg x 10deg) so you aren't throwing too much light up into other cars eyes and you get a nice little parking light and lights up the road on the sides pretty well. A Rebel + Carclo 10mm optic is cheaper than those star LED's too (about $3/ea vs $10/ea).

 

Regardless of the LED used, you will need to mount them to either a well designed FR4 PCB or a metal core PCB and mount that to a heatsink (maybe make the panel out of aluminum, mill some fins in the back and mount them to that). You also need to drive them with a constant current circuit, and ideally have them dim down at night (most CC drivers have a dimming feature), then you could have them go full-bright with the high beams at night. If you drive them just with a resistor, it would generate tons of heat and the brightness will vary as the alternator/battery voltage varies from 11 to 14.5 volts or so. Look into a Buck Puck for driving them. You could probably get pretty good brightness at 0.5A per LED, and run them in series (one string of two, one string of three) and use a pair of buck pucks to drive. The BP has an external dimming input so you can hook them up to the low/high beams and have two brightness levels and get nice visibility in daylight as well as dimmed down at night.

 

Then like you said just slap a piece of tinted 2074 acrylic on the front (2064 might be dark enough) and you're good to go.

 

The OEM washer cover from Lambo is a bit of a complex shape (see image) that has a protrusion on one side that looks like it flips up to expose the mechanism underneath. It looks, unfortunately, like the OEM panel has some curvature across it's surface too unfortunately.

 

I have tons of LED's and optics around my shop if you want something to play around with.

 

Ya sure I could use some help. It looks like you know your stuff. Do you have a Gallardo or Murc?

That is my car photoshopped unless someone snuck in my garage and installed the new head lights :-)

 

Looks very good by the way.

 

Maybe I should integrate the light this way?

 

LOL yup, just a quick P-Shop to show a possibility for this idea.

I will let you know how it goes.

 

The problem is that to get a mold done, you're looking at around $15,000-20,000USD and that is getting it made by a reputable shop in Taiwan (because it's at least 4 molds - back plate and front lens, and the left and right are different [mirror images of each other]). It could be 6 molds if there is an internal lens like there is on the OEM light, but I think with a good LED design inside, the inner lens is probably not necessary.

 

Honestly, I wouldn't personally be interested in investing the $$ because even if they sold for $500 a pair, you'd need to sell probably 50-70 sets just to get the investment back, and I am not sure there is a big enough market of people willing to pay that.

 

But, I tossed the idea to the manufacturer I use and they are considering it. If they are willing to put the time and money in to do the lens and housing, I will do the electronic and mechanical side. Most likely it would just be a complete LED replacement that totally eliminates all the bulbs on the back and has a triangle/star shaped lights similar to the LP560.

 

It all depends on whether they are willing to make these lights, or alternatively if a Lambo parts shop is interested and thinks they could sell 100+ units, it may work out that way too. I'll keep ya posted!

 

Thank you for the info.! There was a thread about this before and the cost of the mold coincides. $500/pair would be a bargain for a Lambo replacement taillights. Don't remember the exact details but on that same thread, I believe the idea was to get 20 sets at $1500 or somewhere near that ballpark (ok, I just short everyone's foot and up your profit just kidding!). Others please chime in if my figures are incorrect. At any rate, if the end result is a class act product I am sure many G-owners with LP560-style bumper will take the plunge providing the price is reasonable. Perhaps even SP Engineering may consider partnering with you on this. Thanks again.

Ya sure I could use some help. It looks like you know your stuff. Do you have a Gallardo or Murc?

 

 

If I said what car I had I would be booed off this forum but I don't have either a G or a Murc. I design automotive brake lights, tail lights, gauges and various other electronics stuff for a living, so I've definitetely got a little bit of experience on light design. If I were doing it I would do just what I wrote above and go with a Rebel LED (because they are very small and flat) and a 10mm or 20mm optic - that would provide a nice, big, intense circle of light. The mechanical part is probably gonna be the tough part, due to the shape of that OEM piece. It will be interesting to see what you come up with for that, though... those Buck Puck drivers are an off-the-shelf part for driving high power LEDs, I've used them before and they work well. If you use one of those "star" LED's (or the UFO ones mentioned), those metal star boards still need to get mounted to a heatsink, although you can use M3 screws to bolt it to an aluminum base so it does away with having to build a circuit board.

 

 

Thank you for the info.! There was a thread about this before and the cost of the mold coincides. $500/pair would be a bargain for a Lambo replacement taillights. Don't remember the exact details but on that same thread, I believe the idea was to get 20 sets at $1500 or somewhere near that ballpark (ok, I just short everyone's foot and up your profit just kidding!). Others please chime in if my figures are incorrect. At any rate, if the end result is a class act product I am sure many G-owners with LP560-style bumper will take the plunge providing the price is reasonable. Perhaps even SP Engineering may consider partnering with you on this. Thanks again.

 

 

Thanks for the info. I remember the other thread and I think your numbers were right. IIRC the OEM lights are around $850/ea for the G and a more for the LP560... I will see what the guys say who actually make the light housings and if they are willing to do the mold on their own $$, I will do the electronics and I can put them in touch with someone like SP or Ricambi or whoever that would be a carrier.

 

I think there are around 8,600 Gallardos out there in the world. Getting 5% of all buyers to get LP560 lights is probably optimistic so the total volume would probably be a few hundred at most. I told the company that and they are thinking about it. We'll see what happens

If I said what car I had I would be booed off this forum but I don't have either a G or a Murc. I design automotive brake lights, tail lights, gauges and various other electronics stuff for a living, so I've definitetely got a little bit of experience on light design. If I were doing it I would do just what I wrote above and go with a Rebel LED (because they are very small and flat) and a 10mm or 20mm optic - that would provide a nice, big, intense circle of light. The mechanical part is probably gonna be the tough part, due to the shape of that OEM piece. It will be interesting to see what you come up with for that, though... those Buck Puck drivers are an off-the-shelf part for driving high power LEDs, I've used them before and they work well. If you use one of those "star" LED's (or the UFO ones mentioned), those metal star boards still need to get mounted to a heatsink, although you can use M3 screws to bolt it to an aluminum base so it does away with having to build a circuit board.

 

Ya that is why I wanted to use the ufo's because they come ready to mount to aluminum then black anodize. I was hoping not to use a driver. http://www.luxeonstar.com/buckpuck-350ma-d...-mount-p-18.php

 

I don't think the voltage varies that much maybe between 11-14 which I have tested and you can barely see a difference in brightness.

 

As far as the optical angle of the led, It should not matter since I am mounting the led far back and all you should see is the outline of each of the 5 cavities. ( In fact I should look for a wide angle LED to have more even light diffusion. ?

 

 

Inside grill led's

If I said what car I had I would be booed off this forum

I smell a Corve++e

I smell a Corve++e

 

 

LOL actually I forgot about that - yep I do have one of them too, but it's a twin turbo 360 stroker race car

Ya that is why I wanted to use the ufo's because they come ready to mount to aluminum then black anodize. I was hoping not to use a driver. http://www.luxeonstar.com/buckpuck-350ma-d...-mount-p-18.php

 

I don't think the voltage varies that much maybe between 11-14 which I have tested and you can barely see a difference in brightness.

 

As far as the optical angle of the led, It should not matter since I am mounting the led far back and all you should see is the outline of each of the 5 cavities. ( In fact I should look for a wide angle LED to have more even light diffusion. ?

 

 

Ok I got ya... so you're not looking to provide lighting to the road, just like an accent light... in that case, you don't need a lens. The LED's you mention are 120-140 degrees with a lambertian emission pattern, so those on their own would light up the housing.

 

On driving them, I would definitely say you don't want to just use resistors - here's why.

 

At 0.7A with a forward voltage of 4V (for a white LED), that calls for a 15-ohm resistor for a 14.5 voltage, and 10-ohm for 11 volts. So if you go with the 15-ohm one to be safe at 14.5 volts, that means you're only passing 0.45A at 11 volts instead of 0.7A - a 35% difference. You'd almost certainly notice that difference... it's greater for a higher power LED than it would be for a lower power one.

 

Furthermore, a 15-ohm resistor running a 0.7A LED is going to dissipate 7.35 watts of power. 5 of those (one per LED) is going to dissipate 36 watts per side... that's a crapload. And you really need to double the wattage value of the resistor to be safe... 15 watt resistors are pretty big and 5 of them are going to take up a fair amount of space. Also keep in mind those star LED's are about 3-watts each, so you're dumping 50 watts of heat into the housing - that's going to be very hot. If you run the LED's in series, you can only run 2 to a string (3 would have a forward voltage of 12, and would vary intensity drastically with voltage, maybe even going out until the car is started)... but if you run them in strings of 2, you'd use an 8.5 ohm resistor (which would still dissipate 4.2 watts each) but from the 11-14 volt variance, the current would go from 0.35A to 0.7A... that's going to make them half-bright at lower voltages and the intensity will vary with RPM's.

 

You also have to remember that the current draw goes up dramatically with temperature - so as the thing heats up it draws more and more current, and gets hotter and hotter unless there is something to limit current other than the resistor.

 

There isn't a really easy solution when you are using high power LED's... that is just their nature. The buck puck is a neat little device, I used them for a skyscraper lighting project that required dimming and they worked very well. Aimtec also has a brand new LED driver that is 96% efficient and looks very small.

 

If you use a constant current LED driver, you eliminate the brightness variance issue, and you also get rid of 35 watts of power dissipation per 5 LED's.

 

FWIW

Thanks for the info. I remember the other thread and I think your numbers were right. IIRC the OEM lights are around $850/ea for the G and a more for the LP560... I will see what the guys say who actually make the light housings and if they are willing to do the mold on their own $$, I will do the electronics and I can put them in touch with someone like SP or Ricambi or whoever that would be a carrier.

 

I think there are around 8,600 Gallardos out there in the world. Getting 5% of all buyers to get LP560 lights is probably optimistic so the total volume would probably be a few hundred at most. I told the company that and they are thinking about it. We'll see what happens

 

Again, thank you!

 

Perhaps we may want to do a quick poll here as to how many might be interested and what's the general consensus on a fair price? Perhaps a new thread so as to not hijack this one?

Any updates on front and/or rear LED lights?

 

OT but looks like LEDs are the new trend; even Land Rover had hopped on the bandwagon. (2010 face lift + new interior & new engine.)

I'm designing the front. I'll make a few sets, if no one wants them, then oh well.

I'm designing the front. I'll make a few sets, if no one wants them, then oh well.

 

Don't worry, we'll have them

I'm designing the front. I'll make a few sets, if no one wants them, then oh well.

 

I'm interested.

I'm designing the front. I'll make a few sets, if no one wants them, then oh well.

Interested

Count me in as well

 

 

Interested