i guess it's time to make a thread on this.. been tinkering here and there with the basic design, but with winter approaching, i'm missing the brightness more and more. half the time, i need to double check that my reverse light is actually working at all. the two tiny little 921 bulbs aren't cutting it, and i don't do pnp bulbs..
goals:
the reason for the 3A max draw limitation is because each 921 bulb that the oem housing uses was roughly measured to draw 1.5A each, and connects via a single harness to the car. in my last 2 builds, the car used 1157 bulbs, which consumed 3A per side, which allowed for more design freedom... also, this car has a history of blowing up the body control modules with odd electrical mods. and i would like to avoid having to run wiring to create a relay-activated setup if possible..
for reference, here's the housing i'm using-- an oem replacement housing for the fr-s/brz/gt86/etc model

outer section is the magic reverse part, the center red section serves as a rear-facing fog light in non-american models, i want to make it a 4th parking/brake light..
so first things first, i broke out the plastic calipers(yeah that's right, these, real high-tech stuff) and got the rough housing dimensions imported into progecad to start figuring out what fits and what don't..

next i started playing with the center section, as that's the part that i'm not entirely sure how i'm going to make it work at this point..
first try:

second try, partially completed, not happy with layout:

third try, happy with this as brake mode, but not complete-- want to integrate parking mode as well, haven't figured it all out:

i am going to try using some pointled's in the design.. i've kinda wanted to use them in something for a while because of their interesting design traits, and a parking light is a perfect use.
as far as the reverse section of the housing, i threw this together really quickly, which is a good sign-- none of this lines up, i just threw 20mm star boards in something that resembles a line..

so if all 9 of those boards were 3-up xp-g2 boards, that's 27 individual led's... i definitely need to look into using series/parallel wiring for those, and will need to do a lot of number crunching to keep below 1.5A draw on the input side, and maintain 1A current regulation at each led.. all led's are currently planned to share the same heatsink, so thermal runaway shouldn't be an issue..
i won't know more about the reverse section until i get some heatsink material that i haven't ordered yet...
more to come, comments welcome!
goals:
- better then revisions 1&2 in terms of brightness, and equal to rev 1 in terms of beam flood, equal to rev 2 in terms of reach.
- less then 3A max current draw overall(1.5A max per side)
- drive all led's @1A
- focus on using xp-g2 3-up star boards for entire design
- COB, and xm-l2 possibility for flood portion of beam pattern
- center section with parking and brake modes
- integrate high-temp cutoff switch for failsafe
the reason for the 3A max draw limitation is because each 921 bulb that the oem housing uses was roughly measured to draw 1.5A each, and connects via a single harness to the car. in my last 2 builds, the car used 1157 bulbs, which consumed 3A per side, which allowed for more design freedom... also, this car has a history of blowing up the body control modules with odd electrical mods. and i would like to avoid having to run wiring to create a relay-activated setup if possible..
for reference, here's the housing i'm using-- an oem replacement housing for the fr-s/brz/gt86/etc model

outer section is the magic reverse part, the center red section serves as a rear-facing fog light in non-american models, i want to make it a 4th parking/brake light..
so first things first, i broke out the plastic calipers(yeah that's right, these, real high-tech stuff) and got the rough housing dimensions imported into progecad to start figuring out what fits and what don't..

next i started playing with the center section, as that's the part that i'm not entirely sure how i'm going to make it work at this point..
first try:

second try, partially completed, not happy with layout:

third try, happy with this as brake mode, but not complete-- want to integrate parking mode as well, haven't figured it all out:

i am going to try using some pointled's in the design.. i've kinda wanted to use them in something for a while because of their interesting design traits, and a parking light is a perfect use.
as far as the reverse section of the housing, i threw this together really quickly, which is a good sign-- none of this lines up, i just threw 20mm star boards in something that resembles a line..

so if all 9 of those boards were 3-up xp-g2 boards, that's 27 individual led's... i definitely need to look into using series/parallel wiring for those, and will need to do a lot of number crunching to keep below 1.5A draw on the input side, and maintain 1A current regulation at each led.. all led's are currently planned to share the same heatsink, so thermal runaway shouldn't be an issue..
i won't know more about the reverse section until i get some heatsink material that i haven't ordered yet...
more to come, comments welcome!
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