Does anyone know about LED's?

OG-Unleashed

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My dads friend gave this roll of led's to me but im not sure if i can hook it up to my jeep or is it used for hour power?

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That Crazy Squirrel

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They're rated for 12vdc so they should work, even though your typical vehicle voltage is actually around 13.8

They're warm white in color and not all that bright. The entire roll of 300 will about equal a 60w lightbulb.
 

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They're rated for 12vdc so they should work, even though your typical vehicle voltage is actually around 13.8

They're warm white in color and not all that bright. The entire roll of 300 will about equal a 60w lightbulb.

How can you tell the brightness differences?

Also I just tried it on the cars battery and it's not too bad considering I want to use them as rocker lights and not off road lights
 
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That Crazy Squirrel

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On the package they're rated as 5-6 lumens each, so about 1,500-1,800 lumens total.

Typical household incandescent bulbs put out approximately 14 lumens per watt, so a typical 60 watt bulb puts out around 860 lumens, or about half the total of your 300 LED string. But, because your string is spread out, and consists of multiple sources of light it's not exactly comparable to a single point source like one lightbulb. Multiple light sources don't add together directly when it comes to total lumens. You can see this by taking a pair of equal flashlights and shining them on the same spot, the light intensity at that spot doesn't double, it increases by about half. So when considering total lumen output from multiple sources as measured at a single point (your eyes) halving the total gives you approximately the correct level. In this case somewhere between 750 and 900 lumens, or about the brightness of a single 60w bulb.
 

That Crazy Squirrel

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And you can tell how many LEDs are on the roll because it says 60 LED/m (60 per meter) and it's a 5 meter long roll.

You can tell the color from the CCT WW (warm white) designation.

I hope I'm not sounding patronizing or condescending. That's not my intent. I just want to give clear and concise information in response to your questions.
 

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That's actually great information right there! Thanks! But another question....how could I make my own off road light by taking a single strong LED and making a housing and using it as a light...what would I need?
 

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That's actually great information right there! Thanks! But another question....how could I make my own off road light by taking a single strong LED and making a housing and using it as a light...what would I need?

Your first concern would have to be towards a housing that could dissipate the amount of heat generated by such an LED, which can be quite a bit. You'll also need to make it watertight and somewhat shockproof. Then comes the focusing of the beam, but how you do that will depend upon the type and shape of beam you're looking for. Spots, floods, diffused, driving and fog beams all have different shapes and patterns, and those shapes and patterns in turn dictate the shape and design of the reflectors and lenses used, as well as the distance from the LED to the reflector.

In short, it can be done, but you'll need to either study up on the physics involved, or do a lot of testing and experimentation.

Much simpler, and probably cheaper, IMHO, to simply purchase a commercially made LED light suitable for what you want. There's a lot of companies out there making them now, and many of the Chinese imports are really quite good, which has driven the price way down in recent years.

These guys make some of the best (and most expensive) and would be a good starting point: http://www.rigidindustries.com/Default.asp

I have a pair of these mounted on the back of my truck and they work quite well for wide area work lights: http://www.ebay.com/itm/190636907028?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:VRI&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2661

Here's a pic of them in action


DSCN0555 by bwbehling, on Flickr


Just to put things in perspective, that streak of light on the left edge of the photo is a 250w mercury vapor street light, and that point of light on the right side, just above the hood of the Mercury Mountaineer is a Coleman gas lantern outside a tent about 25' behind the Mercury. The red lights are 6 strings (100 each) of red LED Christmas lights. Yeah, those fwonking floods are bright. :)
 
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