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where can I find red and blue LEDs?

Mohrenberg

Mohrenberg

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Anyone know where I can get high brightness red and blue LEDs?
I'm not sure what I need yet though. I am putting emergency lights on my truck, and I just won this:
6 New 1W Clear EMS Tow LED Lightbar Grill Light Bar | eBay


Since they are white, I will be replacing them with red and blue. I'm not sure if it uses through hole LEDs or surface mount cree style ones, either way they seem hard to find.

This is my attempt to get lights on my truck for around $75-$100 instead of spending a few hundred dollars...
 
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  1. Find police car.
  2. Steal light bar.
  3. ???
  4. Profit!

It's free and EXACTLY what you need! What could go wrong?

Trevor
 
If you're feeling lazy, you could just add a gel filter over them.

Assuming they're 5mm LEDs, you can replace them directly with any other 5mm LED. Watch out for the red though, because "warmer" colors have a lower voltage drop than "cooler" colors. They won't be as bright as white, but that's just physics.

I would start from scratch and get a bunch of the "3W" chinese stars on ebay. They're down to about $1 now I think. Mount them all on an aluminum bar which is <$10 at your local hardware store. This doubles as a heat sink that you can bolt directly to your roof. Add clear housing and driving circuitry, and you have a $300 bar for <$40. Maybe add what you just won as accents elsewhere on the vehicle?
 
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Hmm, emergency lights on a non emergency vehicle is illegal no? Well, it is here lol.
 
Things said:
Hmm, emergency lights on a non emergency vehicle is illegal no? Well, it is here lol.
Click to expand...

at least in MA, if you work for the fire dept you are allowed to have red and white flashers on your personal vehicle because your not always at the station when a fire happens. especially in my town since most the fire fighters are volunteers so they are coming from work or home. they still need to abide by the traffic laws but not too many people question them for speeding or going through red lights
 
Probably just generic 1W or 3W lambertian "luxeon" style LEDs. You'll have to crack 'em open when you get 'em and let us know how hard tehy're being driven ;-)

edit: hmm, each module has 3 LEDs, each module is 1W, thinking probably those "Superflux" or "Pirahna" style LEDs are in there. some kinds have 5 low power dice in 'em, and can be driven at like, 100mA. Either way, I think best way to do it is see what LEDs they are using first. Or build from scratch like Cy says, bigger project, but will be more attention grabbing. You'll also have to deal with how to control their blinkiness.
 
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I just ordered Cree LEDS. They are like 160 lumens at 1A...
I highly doubt the lights I bought are being driven even close to that current, but ill wire them in and see what happens.
 
Mohrenberg said:
I just ordered Cree LEDS. They are like 160 lumens at 1A...
I highly doubt the lights I bought are being driven even close to that current, but ill wire them in and see what happens.
Click to expand...

Depending on what model xt-p or xp-e or the other models Cree makes you can run them at 1a no problem for years straight.
A lot of high end aquarium lights are now being made out of high powers LEDs
3w, 5w and even pendent style lights with 100w LEDs chips and they last for years.

Brigelux and luxeon and LEDs are also very good and can be driven with lots of power.
 
Are you going to be mounting the LEDs to a heatsink? If so I would actively cool them with something like a 40mm CPU fan mounted to the sink. I would not take the chance with them being passively cooled. active cooling would extend the life of the LEDs greatly.
 
Well, I got the lights, which were much smaller than I expected! The LEDS it had in them were in a square package with 4 through hole legs.

On top of that, When I ordered my red and blue Cree LEDs, I thought they were the standard Cree LED size we find in most flashlights. These were TINY.

I managed to wire them up by pretinning a wire, and then mounting the LEDS along the single wire, and floating them behind the reflectors.
It took me most of the day to mod all 18, but it came out very nicely.

I just ordered 18 more of these (54 LEDs) to create a large light bar for the windshield.
The LEDS are going to run me around $100, but I'll come out of it with a light setup that most people pay $700, for only around $200....

I'm going to try and find larger Cree style LEDs this time, and buy start boards with them this time....
 
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This is what I ended up with. Since they are so small, i'm going to mount these in the grill of my truck.
my iphone doesn't capture the color very well. These are brighter than my co-worker's emergency lights, and the color is really great on them, and I came out about $30 cheaper than what he paid for a small light bar.
 
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Google for Pirahna or superflux style LEDs if you want direct replacements.

what model of Cree did you get? XR or XP? XR are much easier to solder to than XP ;-)
 
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