LED STOPLIGHTS???

[Wolf]

Would love to go LED for brake/tail and indicators - the 100,000-hour life of LEDs scores over incandescent bulbs.

I don't know that there would be much point in lengthening the life of the LEDs by pulsing - 11.42 years continuous use is a hell of a long time. Even if you rode for 8 hours a day, every day, with the lights on, the tail light LEDs would last you over 34 years. The bike itself would not survive that punishment, never mind how you would feel.

Assuming 2 hours communtering a day and say an hour after work and a good 6 hour ride on one day of the weekend, you're looking at 91.32 years for the tail light LEDs.

Providing your circuitry is sound and you don't overload the LEDs, you should get a large number of years' use out of the tail LEDs and you should never need worry about the indicators or brakes so long as you live.

Even if you have to replace the tail LEDs because you installed them when you got your licence at 15 and you've put in a few RTW trips and pretty much lived in the saddle, a fistful of LEDs after 40-odd years would cost a damn-sight less than you would have spent on bulbs in the same time (especially with that much riding).

The other thing is: when a tail/brake dual-filament bulb goes, it is usually only the tail filament, requiiring you to buy a new dual-filament bulb even though your brake filament is fine. This means your purchase of brake bulbs is usually dictated by your purchase of tail light bulbs (two-bulb systems being the exception)

Only time I blew a brake filament was when I had a loose earth and I went over a bump while both the brake and the indicators were on - lost both indicators on one side as well as brake, tail and low beam filaments all at once - bit of a strange fluke, that one.

What I'd like to see is a way of setting up LED head lamps - something like those high powered white LED torches aimed into a reflector array...

[Pixie]

What I'd like to see is a way of setting up LED head lamps - something like those high powered white LED torches aimed into a reflector array...

These won't be too far off ,the semiconductor manufacturers are working on them.
one idea is an array over the frontal area of a vehicle.
LED downlights for buildings are already available.

[Ixion]

How do LED's stand up to vibration ? On bikes I reckon you lose 10 bulbs to vibration for every one that dies of old age.

It's a pain replacing them because sometimes they can die within a few days. And bikes nowdays have so MANY bulbs .

[Pixie]

The LED packages are completely vibration proof,being encased in a block of clear plastic.
the leads are potentially suseptable to damage in a poorly designed assembly,but you can pot the whole lot in resin and vibration wouldn't be a concern at all.

[Ixion]

The LED packages are completely vibration proof,being encased in a block of clear plastic.
the leads are potentially suseptable to damage in a poorly designed assembly,but you can pot the whole lot in resin and vibration wouldn't be a concern at all.

Thanks. Worth thinking about then

[sAsLEX]

Thanks. Worth thinking about then

you will notice alot of big trucks now have LED on the trailers for this reason, vibes kill normal bulbs so I think hella do truck lights in LED now.

A lot of the early LED lights in cars would discolour after a few years due to the current through them being poorly maintained, oh and why do something simple when you can waste more time at work learning how to do something a little more tricky

[Wolf]

These won't be too far off ,the semiconductor manufacturers are working on them.
one idea is an array over the frontal area of a vehicle.

Excellent!

It will piss off a lot of bulb manufacturers, though. Another reason why bulbs are used is to tie people into having to buy replacements - "planned obsolescence".

Bulbs could be a lot better constructed and last longer, but they aren't because that'd kill their profits. They rely on the bulbs blowing frequently - they cost piss-all to make as they're produced in such vast quantities (high volume = low unit cost) and so they make horrendous profits on them.

If I were going to convert a bike to LED brake/tail, indicators and instrumentation, it would have to be a bike I planned on never getting rid of - my ultimate dream bike - or a bike I planned on taking on a world tour (so I won't have to worry about anything but spare head lamp bulbs - unless they get LED headlamps sussed by then...)

How do LED arrays stack up in terms of power consumption (total unit including driver and enough LEDs for, say, a decent brake light)? The brake filament is usually 21 watts and most of that is heat. Are LEDs more efficient than bulbs? If so, enough that the added overhead of the driver does not push power consumption off the graph?

[FEINT]

Excellent!


How do LED arrays stack up in terms of power consumption (total unit including driver and enough LEDs for, say, a decent brake light)? The brake filament is usually 21 watts and most of that is heat. Are LEDs more efficient than bulbs? If so, enough that the added overhead of the driver does not push power consumption off the graph?

From my knowledge not a very big one.... but, LED's consume less wattage than conventional bulbs. So you should get all those LEDS in no problem. You probably need resistors to step down the voltage / current.

Correct me if I am wrong..... ...... probably wrong...... hides for cover....

[FlyingDutchMan]

LEDs use next to no power. Depending on size & colour, they can get up to 20% efficent for small red ones. The least effcient are the blue/white ones. Bulbs are around 1% efficent if that, and Halogen are in the 5% range.

An added advange of LEDs: all the light they produce is in a specific light range (say red), so none of it is filtered out in a red lens, giving an even higher effective efficiency. About 70% of white light is filtered out through a red lens.

So basically 1 or 2 watts of red LEDs = 21watt bulb.

[bugjuice]

bulbs take up heaps more wattage than LEDs.
If you convert your indicators from bulbs to LED flashers, then switch your indicators on, they flash like strobe lights. That's cos there's the same current going to them, but the relay is overloaded cos there's no bulb to sap up the current going, cos the LEDs don't need that much. So you have to get a lower rated relay (there's 'LED' rated relays for this sort of thing) which can be adjusted to suit the amount of LEDs you have (1 LED is even less, compared to 10). LEDs are a fraction of everything a conventional bulb is in terms of demands, but lasts a squillion times more, and is just as bright, if not more intense in some cases

[Wolf]

FEINT, FlyingDutchMan and Bugjuice, thanks heaps. Nice to know I'd be able to use the surplus energy from the alternator to power my satelite dish and beer fridge. Oops, sorry, forgot I only wanted a BMW R100, not a Goldwing.

Sounds like advantages all around - vibration proof, excellent life span, low power consumption, great visibility, tailored frequencies (red, amber) - why do we use bulbs, again? Oh that's right, we've already covered greed.

Seriously, the technology has been around for years to make LED indicator and brake/tail light systems for vehicles and make them standard factory-fitted fixtures.

The brake filament is usually 21 watts and most of that is heat.

About 70% of white light is filtered out through a red lens.

Thanks. I'd forgotten about that.

On top of most the bulb's output being invisible to human eyes, most of what we can see is not being passed by the lens - no wonder the 5W tail lamp is bloody near impossible to see in the fog!

I wonder what the legality would be of leveraging the fact you have an array of LEDs rather than a single bulb and using a sequencer circuit to animate the tail light - some always going but others flashing on and off to make patterns. Imagine rolling along the road at night and turning a corner to see a pattern-shifting red light in front of you - you'd certainly know something was there.

I know bicyclists have flashing and/or shifting lights. What does the law say regarding doing the same for our motorbikes?

[FlyingDutchMan]

It'd be wicked, but my understanding, its illegal. The wording seems to be "... steadily illuminated." Motu seems to know a bit on this subject.

[Biff]

Pedant head on - FDM that circuit diagrams contain symbols for plain ole diodes, and not LED's.

Me thinks you meant to use this symbol.
I know you know this. But it makes me feel all superior pointing this out!

[Wolf]

Pedant head on - FDM that circuit diagrams contain symbols for plain ole diodes, and not LED's.

Yeah, but think of all the ink he saved not drawing all those li'l arrows.

[Wolf]

Pedant head on - FDM that circuit diagrams contain symbols

Pedant mode enabled: "That circuit diagram contains" or "Those circuit diagrams contain"

Now I'll stop before I screw up my grammar or spelling and invite a retort.