Ultra bright LED's

OK, here's another brain picker.

I want to replace all my dull LED lights with ultra bright white ones...

What are the best to use, as in what do i search for on e..Bay, to ensure that i'm getting the bright ones... I want to burn the plastic off the car in front of me.

Jase

There's no specific thing to search for...Just look for the leds that have the highest MCD (millicandela) rating. Higher the number the more luminous they are. Nice and simple.


EDIT: Forgot one thing. The wider the angle of light (say 35° vs. 15°) the duller they will appear when you look head on. But they will throw more overall light due to the wider beam being produced.
So for example comparing a 1000mcd 15° LED to a 1000mcd 35° head on the 15° would look brighter. But the 35° would throw more light over a great area.

isnt there an led called a "cree" (spelling i am not sure on) or something like that, i have seen these in torches and i think rednut had them on his trucka couple of years back, holly sh!t they are bright.

Cree are a brand of LED. The were the first to do the ultra bright white LEDs (like you see in head torches etc). They are expensive as all hell and extremely sensitive to input voltage. But they are the brightest white LED you can get.

These are them: http://jaycar.com.au/productResults.asp?keywords=Cree+white+led&keyform=KEYWORD&SUBMIT.x=0&SUBMIT.y=0

to give me an idea to compare to, what MCD are the lights in your white Honcho Troy, they are bright but if i can get brighter then bring your sunnies!!!

Jayboy74 wrote:to give me an idea to compare to, what MCD are the lights in your white Honcho Troy, they are bright but if i can get brighter then bring your sunnies!!!

I'm guessing you're talking about the roof bar... If you are i've got NFI what MCD they are. I went to jaycar and said 'Gimmie the brightest 3mm white LEDs you've got', and that's what i ended up with. I remember they weren't cheap though at around $3-4ea.

now seen as though you are the author of this section I think that the answer you have given is not technical and to state that you don't know is not good enough!!!

I'll exepct you to obtain some form of light measuring device and mesaure those puppies!! and give me a more technical answer forthwith.


What about the black and red wireing, what sizes are those, just in case i decide to buy some stupidly high MCD, and they are non wired, I want to buy some red and black wiring to put them all together, but not sure of what it is called other than "red and black wire"

Well my official WIDELOAD rating is F'n bright....

As for wiring, I'm using 22awg (same as servo wire) LED's don't draw enough amps to need anything bigger. So you options are to get servo wire and just split the 3 wires down into individual strands, or just get plain 22awg stuff.

Servo wires: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/RC-SERVO-WIRE-FUTABA-COLOURS-22AWG-Metre-/220773807818?pt=AU_Toys_Hobbies_Radio_Controlled_Vehicles&hash=item336724f6ca

22awg plain: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Silicone-Wire-22awg-Red-Black-/390351988687?pt=AU_Toys_Hobbies_Radio_Controlled_Vehicles&hash=item5ae2caa7cf

cheers,

bought me some 20000MCD lights a whole $3 for 10, couple of metres of wire (i'm still leanring soldering may have to go through a bit), heat shrink.

Now i pulled apart an LED i had and it had a capacitor attached to the red, is this a must have.... or just a cover your ass in case of a surge thing

Jayboy74 wrote:cheers,
bought me some 20000MCD lights a whole $3 for 10, couple of metres of wire (i'm still leanring soldering may have to go through a bit), heat shrink.
Now i pulled apart an LED i had and it had a capacitor attached to the red, is this a must have.... or just a cover your ass in case of a surge thing

The thing on the positive is a resistor to drop the voltage down to a level the LED can handle.

If you're LED's dont have them you will need to add one (or more) in.
Use this calc to work out what value resistor you'll need: http://scriptasylum.com/rc_speed/led.html

245ohms @ 20mA, on cheapbay they have 270ohm, as the closest value, is this ok? This is based on 7.4V 2S Lipo.

I'm assuming i calculated correctly, I have 10 lights to put on throughout the vehicle, through an isolation, the main wire will be soldered to the area where the battery plug from the car meets the capacitor/ESC, then onto the switch then onto the lights.

Basically as soon as the battery is plugged in the lights will be on permanently unless i turn te switch off, if this makes sense.

Yeah 270ohm would work, 240ohm should work as well.


To get them you might as well go to Jaycar - 240ohm: http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=RR0557&form=CAT2&SUBCATID=968#1
270ohm: http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=RR0558&form=CAT2&SUBCATID=968#1

All done, lights, resistors, wire heat shrink. All up about $20 delivered to make 100 lights!!!

OK, now in case you haven't worked it out yet, I was the "What if" kid at the academy.. but knowledge is power , which is why you have your own section, due to your knowledge.

I digress:

I'll have 10 lights, and want maximum MCD's out of these babies.... wiring.... Do i wire them all up and then solder 10 ends of red and 10 of black together and then solder these directly to my switch and then solder my switch to say the battery plug like the BEC or at the point where the battery plug wire enters the ESC? Will the battery give out enough power for everything?

Or what is your suggestion for wiring and power? Your knowledge is giving me my power.

No worries mate...Happy to help.

But you're on you own with wiring....

What you've said is pretty much right. If you wire them in parallel (all +ve together, and all -ve together) and the put a switch on the +ve side.

Now as for powering it, you could draw it straight off the main pack like you did with the BEC. it would be the best way to get clean power to the lights.

Too make things a bit easier as well i would suggest picking up some JST plugs like these: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/10x-JST-Plug-Pigtails-150mm-Lipo-Battery-ESC-Heli-RC-/280511918344?pt=AU_Toys_Hobbies_Radio_Controlled_Vehicles&hash=item414fd03108

The you can bundle together sets (roof bar, head light, tail lights etc) and make them removable if needed.

ok so Operation Suck it and See will be underway once i have executed Operation Solder those bloody lights correctly.

ok got my stuff today and here is my first set up but it won't work so by looking at it can you tell me where i wnet wrong, when i put the lights on a termianl they works, i soldered the resistor and tried it and it worked the moment i put wires on, nothing, can you assist?




270 Ohm resistors
22AWG wiring

Looking at it, its wired right. So not sure what it could be, maybe a dodgy joint or a bad resistor.
Make sure your -ve wire is on the flat spotted side of the LED as well.

What voltage did you use to test it? If you used too low of a voltage with the resistor. The resistor will burn off too much voltage so the LED wont get enough to activate. If you used to higher voltage (over what the LED is rated at) it has probably damaged the LED.

What voltage LED's did you get? If they are a different voltage to what you used to calculate the resistor value you can end up with the same effect.

This is where you just have to trouble shoot with different LED's, resistors and solder joints to work it out.

^^ Also if he held the soldering iron on it for too long he may have cooked the LED.

I got me 2 bright as cree LEDs the other day: http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=ZD0290

WIDELOAD wrote:Looking at it, its wired right. So not sure what it could be, maybe a dodgy joint or a bad resistor.
Make sure your -ve wire is on the flat spotted side of the LED as well.

What voltage did you use to test it? If you used too low of a voltage with the resistor. The resistor will burn off too much voltage so the LED wont get enough to activate. If you used to higher voltage (over what the LED is rated at) it has probably damaged the LED.

What voltage LED's did you get? If they are a different voltage to what you used to calculate the resistor value you can end up with the same effect.

This is where you just have to trouble shoot with different LED's, resistors and solder joints to work it out.

Hmm yes, I worked out that the flat side is negative.. they could have told me that in the instructions!!!


OK, I have 3.0-3.2V LED's, I did not use this voltage in my calculations, so i redid it and the resistor i needed is 220 Ohm, so is 270 too much.

I actually tested the lights through the battery, i plug it in to the car and touch the wires to where the plug wires are attached to the wiring box, and at one stage i touched the wires to the actual battery terminals. So maybe the 7.4V has damaged it, but touching the actual bulb through the terminals made it work, then when i wired it up it didn't?

What i'll do is wire up another one and see if i have the same problem?

Also if i didn't use a resistor what would be the resulting factor to my lights>

Best thing to do just keep trying. If after another couple it still doesn't work i would take it as the resistor being too higher value.
I would get to Jaycar and grab some 210 & 220Ω resistors. They are cheap enough though that you can experiment a bit and it saves waiting for ones to arrive home OS via fleabay. It wouldn't even surprise me if the resistors are a different value to what is indicated.
Ntoff's right as well, make sure you work quickly so you don't overheat any of the components and damage them.

If you don't use a resistors the LEDs will burn up and fail. Sometimes they change colour and then just go out, but i've had a couple recently literally pop.
You can get around using a resistors by doing funky wiring, but it wouldn't work that well because of the input voltage you are using.

WIDELOAD wrote:Best thing to do just keep trying. If after another couple it still doesn't work i would take it as the resistor being too higher value.
I would get to Jaycar and grab some 210 & 220Ω resistors. They are cheap enough though that you can experiment a bit and it saves waiting for ones to arrive home OS via fleabay. It wouldn't even surprise me if the resistors are a different value to what is indicated.
Ntoff's right as well, make sure you work quickly so you don't overheat any of the components and damage them.

If you don't use a resistors the LEDs will burn up and fail. Sometimes they change colour and then just go out, but i've had a couple recently literally pop.
You can get around using a resistors by doing funky wiring, but it wouldn't work that well because of the input voltage you are using.

Roger, at least my soldering is getting neater!!!

Sorted, not as bright as i wanted but still consistent and neat

If that was with the 270Ω resistors they wont be as bright as they could be. If it was with the correct value resistor it makes you wonder if the LEDs are actually the MCD listed in the ad.

Mine weren't that bright, until I removed the resistor. 2 x 3.2v LED's I figure that should be a 6.4v supply voltage, running off a 6v BEC. They're hideously bright (see video). I do realize this is probably bad but I'm just so damn curious as to how long they'll actually last without a resistor. I'm bored and like to see things fry

Another thing I did with mine, to solder them on I used those helping hands things, you know the ones with the aligator clips & magnifying glass you can use to hold stuff. They work pretty well as a dodgybrothers backyard heatsink if you don't have any actual heatsink pliers or clips.

This is my usual way of doing things:
Tin your wires first, both the LED and supply wires. Use flux even if you have flux cored solder.
Get your wire touching your LED, use helper hands to hold them together if your hands shake or you're affraid of burning your fingers.
Get a small blob of solder on the iron
Touch it to the 2 wires you're joining
Remember that you should have put the heat shrink tube on first
(swear)
Unsolder the joint
Put heatshrink over
Re-do solder joint :p

If you are running them in series (+ve to -ve to +ve to -ve etc.), that will be fine as the voltage drop across the LEDs works out to 6.4v as you said. If you are running in parallel (+ve to +ve & -ve to -ve etc.), you wont get long out of them without the resistor as you're running them at double the recommended voltage.

The resistor is to literally burn off the extra voltage when you run a low voltage item (such as an LED) from a higher voltage supply.
My Honcho has no resistors in it's LED circuits, cause i'm using a 6v power source with 3v LED's. I have pairs of the LEDs wired up in series, and them wire the pairs in parallel.

Thanks for putting up the Soldering steps as well, they'll come in handy for those who don't know how to do it. The only things i would add is make sure you tin your iron, make sure you use non-acid flux paste for electrical components and keep the iron tip clean.