Custom High power LED light bar

Sorry, been busy. I am going out tonight with the tripod and SLR to take some good photos at various locations.

EDIT: USB cable isn’t working to get photos off camera, have to wait until tonight or tomorrow to post them.

I had a couple different locations, but they didn’t turn out at the first location as we had the camera on the wrong setting and didn’t figure it out until after. These pics were taken with a Sony A58 DSLR on tripod at 55mm on the setting for night scene (w/tripod setting). Most of them are at F/5.6 and 1/2 sec exposure. I still can’t seem to produce good beam shots, I am not sure if it is the settings I am using or the camera that simply cannot capture good night scenes.

So the signs you can see at the end of the road are 1/2 mile away, the bluff of trees on the right side of road are 1100 feet away, and where the road seems to disappear as it levels out after an incline is around 1700 feet.

This is the light bar with complete de-domed XHP-50’s 5000k, although now they are probably somewhere in the 4000 - 4500k tint. PHOTO NUMBER 6 CAPTURES MOST LIKE WHAT I APPEARS IN PERSON.

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BELOW, the tree bluff is 900 feet away. This picture got under exposed as the snow in the for ground would reflect alot of the light.

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Below 2 pictures I held the light bar lower, and lower, respectively.

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Now this picture (BELOW) is of a single XHP-70 de-domed running 12v and 5.5 amps (would be 11 amps if it were a 6v setup). The optic is a LUM 5-90, this thing has THROW! 4 of them would be a serious light bar.

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Wow, do those settings approximate what your eye sees?

You got snow already? burr

3 weeks ago, over a foot of snow, it is almost gone now.

Valorum, photo number 6 is what best approximates what yours eyes see.

Wow, that’s really impressive! I can’t wait for this.

You will notice how soft the beam pattern is, compare this with high end reflector based light bars such as Baja’s onx6 series which has a very sharp beam and field pattern. I don’t care for that kind of beam in a driving light, I want something that is smooth and transitions nicely from far to near field.

Zpinch, about that single XHP-70 DD: How high was it above the ground in that pic? The beam pattern looks close to what I’m wanting for my street van which has high large openings in the grille where a couple of those could mount inconspicuously. The huge steel fascia panel would provide both a solid mounting and some heat-sinking and a wedge-shaped aluminum base could do the primary heat-sinking and aiming for me.

Still following you and your impressive light bar, and though it’s far more than I can use ATM I’m learning a lot from your efforts :+1:

Phil

Sawmaster, the xhp-70 was about 4 feet off the ground.

That’s pretty close to where I’ll be :smiley: Thanks!

Phil

One of the things I’ve wondered about that I kept forgetting to ask about, how is it with your eyes adjusting after you turn the light bar off? Say you’re driving and another driver comes along, you turn it off, are you essentially blind in the dark at this point because it’s so much brighter than your headlights?

I haven’t really tested that Valorum, but with any light that is much brighter than the ambient or in this case the headlights, you are going to have a moment of quite reduced visibility as your eyes don’t adjust instantly. The brightness settings will come in handy because of this fact.

Given equal lumen output my eyes adjust back much quicker when the LED’s are in the 4000-5000 Kelvin range. Those 8000-10,000 Kelvin GlareMasters really pound the eyes.

Is this a handheld light? I searched all over for an enclosure that would fit the LUM 5-90 after seeing Old Lumen’s posts with it. My original idea was a light bar with 4-5 of them in an aluminum enclosure, similar to what you have. If I couldn’t do that, I wanted to try to fit them into something like this:

Yes, kind of, sort of. It is mounted to a copper heatpipe CPU heatsink using AC5 paste.

I am not sure, but the LUM 5-90 might be deeper than that enclosure.

I haven’t worried about it since I saw this thread. I’ve been swayed by your design!

What’s the next step? :student:

Hey guys, I have been really busy starting a new business for myself and haven’t been able to put any time into this. I am actually going to be doing a redesign of the light bar using the LLC56N as spots (same as before), but instead of the Carclo 30mm elliptical TIR, I will be using the gaggione LLC49E, a 45mm elliptical TIR. There was a picture of it on page 1 or 2 of this thread. I just find that the 30m just doesn’t go with the big spot optic, two different styles if you know what I mean. The flood will then have a more intense flatter beam, which is good (44,000 Cd vs. 27,000 Cd for the Carclo).

I might have to scrap the Conrad Heatsink and get one custom made for size reasons, but maybe not. Stay tuned.

Great work I look forward to seeing the final result.

The optic at top of picture is the LLC49E. A FWHM of 39° x 13.6° vs. 43° x 19° for the 30mm Carclo optic, and 4.4 Cd/Lm vs. 2.7 for Carclo.