LED Taillights, Diy

[kikkegek]

Matt...lumen outputs are not that simple. look into this factsheet of Philips

http://www.philipslumileds.com/uploads/207/AB20-1-PDF

the output of an LED is determined by its application and one LED is not gonna output 10 lumens

also standard specifications for LEDS use the "DC Forward current" for comparison. Your LEDs will run fine on 15mA...but will get screamingly hot if run for a couple of minutes on 50mA. believe me I have tried. where these Lumileds (datasheet calls them Superflux) run only hand-warm at 50mA.

the peak value is only there to tell you what it can very briefly during "peak" its able to handle and it of no use for running lights or turn signal.

I looked at the color again and I now see that yours are 630nm..the ones I used are 624. so pretty close. that would make these leds more orange-red then red. But that is what you want for tail lights with a red lens.

I dont understand why your resistors would get that hot. I even used SMD resistors for my arrays to control the needed current and I believe I used one 1/4Watt resistors for dimming the LEDs and they do not even get hand warm. using the right wattage will make sure they are able to dissipate the load they need to handle.

All my thoughts and all the answers are in my build thread, but feel free to ask if you need.

for turn signals I just calculated the needed resistor with a online ledcalc and for the regular running lights I just did a test behind a lens and just swapped in resistors without soldering, holding them in series without soldering them in.