My father is buying one of the Polaris Ranger EV lines… he is looking for a light bar and I’m helping. He takes things a little bit further than those that take things too far… Does anyone have advice on a light bar? I read Cree is coming out with more powerful stadium lighting LEDs, could a 12volt battery light one of those bastards up? How bright can I get!!! Basically, here is the criteria
Required
ABSURDLY bright
Looking for a combination of throw and area lighting
waterproof
rugged
Preferred
multiple brightness settings
ideally source power from Polaris batteries
willing to but separate set of batteries or nuclear power plant if required
phatphil - thx but doesn’t seem that bright
dchomak - haha, great point!
koyotee - yeah man, i would if i knew how. is there a place to buy an outdoor LED bar starter kit, then another to buy your own LEDs?
Surely one of the manufacturers praised on this site has a solution, and if not they should!
Hmmm… would be cool to put 2 Olight Javelins and 4 Noctigons hooked up to a battery sourced strapped to some type of bar / bracket. that would be bright and have all the throw and spill brightness one could handle!
I think you guys are looking at the wrong light bar, look for the OnX6 instead, it produces 6,450 lumens for each 10” section.
The 40” version is over 25,000 lumens and uses 24 XM-L2s, I have seen these bars in action and trust me they are bright…. With a single 20” bar it is possible to not use any other light source and still shine a long way down the road. There are other brands too. VisionX and rigid industries are also pretty well known.
You can get a 30” bar for the top of your Polaris and two 10” on each side above the stock headlight, do a HID swap and it will be insanely bright.
If I ever get the Jeep or truck I’m hoping to, I’ll most likely start with a cheapo lightbar to harvest the case, then beef it up with more heatsinking and swap all the electronics. 5 XHP70’s and 5 XHP35 HI’s would cover both the massive lumens and long throw desires, and still be very compact. Then I can seal it up tight myself. I could do 5-10 of these for the price of one of those 30” Baja’s. (and it’s more fun to do it yourself)
But how do you drive the LEDs? Alternator output is up say 14.4v and engine off is possibly well down into the 11v range, that’s without accounting for any nasty spikes…
Well I wouldn’t direct-drive it. I would get a nice buck/boost automotive driver. There are some really nice drivers available when you aren’t limited by the size of a flashlight body.
Could you link some please? I’d appreciate that, I have been thinking of building some lights but the drivers seem to be the hard part. Seems Bigtoy in the thread I linked had a lot of failures
What do you mean by how do you drive them? You just plug and play… These have integrated driver and can uses current regulation regardless of the temperature, the aluminium housing have fins so it remains cool when the vehicle is in movement. The ones I have used before take anywhere between 10-16V and doesn’t get too hot even when stationary. Some even take 12/24V.
Most LED bars look like this, with a common mcpcb housing all components placed directly over the heatsink/body. Bajadesign led bars mentioned above uses “copper drive” which I guess is the LED is mounted on copper mcpcb and is separated from the driver for a more efficient heat transfer.
I think Jeansy was asking me about my DIY aspirations.
My answer is this: Just a simple ebay/google search found me this, but I didn’t look long enough to know if this would work correctly or see if there are cheaper options. If/when I get to the point have having a vehicle for it, I’ll research more
Sorry Will, you were an unwanted quote Yes to drive the emitters as PD mentioned.
Thanks PD, I haven’t looked recently but when I did a while ago getting a suitable, reliable driver in an automotive application was far far harder than expected.
Maybe a BLF one could be created? I see one member here helped Bigtoy but it seems the design was flawed somehow
And PilotPk is awol. You get more options if you just search for “dc power supply” instead of “led driver”. Also, as was mentioned you could run the XHP70’s at 6v and use a buck driver, which is much cheaper than buck/boost. You can get a 100w buck for about $10.
I’ve got to second that reply. They even list the led’s used, the Kelvin rating. Most light bars still say 3/5 watt leds. I’ve looked at a lot of off road led lighting systems. One of our atv guys picked up the Baja Designs 4x4 for the bumper. This one I think http://www.bajadesigns.com/ProductDetail?ItemNumber=490003 Very well made very bright and no blue green light garbage.
Yes to drive the emitters as PD mentioned.