Interior illumination upgrade to LEDs

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Interior illumination upgrade to LEDs

October 13, 2012, 08:06:09 PM

So I will be posting information about my swaps on the interior to provide lighting from LEDs, rather than the stock incandescent bulbs.

Today before putting the seats back in the car, I installed LEDs for the front floor lighting. I use 12v Cree XM-L EasyWhite emitters due to their neutral white color and good color rendering index (the amount of the color spectrum that the light reproduces). I also use the "MR16" 700mA (tests at 640-660mA) LED drivers from Dealextreme as they work great in a car environment, and drop next to no heat with the 12v LEDs. The rectifier diodes were pulled since AC power isn't needed, and I don't plan on hooking up the wires backwards. If you tend to have a habit of this, these drivers with the rectifier diodes still in place will not work too well in the 12v system due to the additional voltage drop from the 12v input when the car is off.

Following how I mounted the LEDs in my trunk, I used a piece of aluminum stock 3/4" wide and 1/8" thick. I cut the length to the same size as the stock bulb holder to place the LED emitters in the same position as the stock bulbs. I use a drill press to drill holes just large enough to allow standard fine thread "computer screws" to thread themselves into the aluminum. Other than thermal goop between the LED and aluminum, the LED just bolts on to the aluminum with a isolation washer in between the screw and LED star to prevent any shorting. The Driver and wires are held in place firmly with liberally-applied silicone adhesive. This works well due to the lower levels of heat generated by LEDs, and mounting the aluminum to a piece of metal prevents the LED from heating up and losing luminous output - other parts of the car help pull heat away from the LED's aluminum bar. This even appears to work in the under-dash lighting with its relatively low amount of metal and contact area. The aluminum bar doesn't get over 120F after 15 minutes.

Here is what the final product looks like:

So I installed the LED in the passenger side of the car and noted that it consumed exactly half the power of the stock incandescent bulb. Using camera settings of 1/60sec shutter, 1.8 aperture, ISO400, and a crop body 8MP camera, the following pictures were taken with the same exact settings as one another. You will note that the stock bulbs don't appear quite this dark so realize that for the same of comparison, these shots are a little darker than typical.

The stock bulb in the passenger side is nothing spectacular, but the red color in the carpet comes out pretty vibrant.

Are you ready for it?
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Single LED installed:

The lighting is much brighter, the red remains very vibrant. I love this LED and driver combination inside a car.

Here are some comparison shots of the passenger side using an LED, and the drivers side using the stock incandescent bulb:

If anyone was curious how bright the light was compared to the rest of the interior, with the dome light on (note the specific camera settings that make everything darker than typical):

Some people think that cool white looks a lot better than something that appears slightly yellow when aimed at a wall. I can prove you wrong with this shot from a flashlight that isn't blue against a wall, but it is still "cool white":

Just say no. Anyway, a post-finishing photo:

More to come of other lights at a later time...

Interior illumination upgrade to LEDs

Reply #1 – October 13, 2012, 08:18:14 PM

wow...nice

Interior illumination upgrade to LEDs

Reply #2 – October 13, 2012, 08:31:51 PM

If anyone was curious why I used those camera settings, this is why:

Even though the illumination from the dome light and interior are closer to realistic, it completely washes out the LED lighting due to the amount of light. Cameras are pretty poor at recording these things, versus the human eye. The LEDs and help make the entire cabin a bit brighter, with the dome light not doing that much in terms of illumination any longer. If I can't get the dome light swapped over to a LED driven at 7W without some machinery, I will settle at half that since heat is basically non-existent at that power level with these parts.

I should add that the cost per LED/driver setup is $7. These two cost me $14, a small piece of aluminum stock that I have, two 3" portions of 18 gauge wire, and a crimp push-on connector (soldered) to attach to the factory wiring.

Interior illumination upgrade to LEDs

Reply #3 – October 13, 2012, 10:21:53 PM

Sneak peak of my next trick:

Interior illumination upgrade to LEDs

Reply #4 – October 14, 2012, 07:10:24 PM

I don't have much to go on in way of steps to do this one. I cut a piece of polycarbonate out and used 2000 grit sandpaper to make it frosted and mounted it with a ring of silicone to the existing lens holder (I cut the stock opaque and scorched lens out). I mounted the LED to a round "5w led heatsink" from ebay and siliconed that to the side of the container. After it set, I installed but had to cut away 1/8 an inch of the center console, an area that you can't see, to get the entire assembly to slide into place.

My final result:

Interior illumination upgrade to LEDs

Reply #5 – October 14, 2012, 09:44:40 PM

have i ever told you lately that you really suck?

i love this project,, great work and i am now inspired. A 7w LED? thats purdy big man but yet the light is so so bright.

YOU WIN

Interior illumination upgrade to LEDs

Reply #6 – April 29, 2013, 01:42:49 PM

Quote from: Seek;400406

If I can't get the dome light swapped over to a LED driven at 7W without some machinery, I will settle at half that since heat is basically non-existent at that power level with these parts.

What'd you end up doing with the dome light?

Any chance you could spoon-feed me some part numbers of what you used? The Cree XM-L EasyWhite emitter I found on digikey doesn't come with a backing plate. The MR16 driver I found on Deal Extreme looks quite a bit different.

Interior illumination upgrade to LEDs

Reply #7 – May 09, 2013, 11:29:32 PM

That is sooooo sick!!! I've wanted to convert my interior lights for a very long time, but do not know enough about L.E.D.s to do what you have done. I'm trying out some stuff with L.E.D.s on my kids' powerwheels.

Interior illumination upgrade to LEDs

Reply #8 – May 10, 2013, 01:32:03 PM

I haven't touched the dome light yet. I've been trying to finish beautifying my old daily driver for sale before I pick up a CNC (hell, there was even a nicer CNC for sale local a few weeks back). I plan on CNCing out a heatsink for dome light heat dissipation. I'd like to change the dome and maps out.

The easywhite LEDs I picked up were $5 each from a chinese website, already on stars. They haven't had stock since last year sometime and I doubt they will get more. I wish I had picked up more as I would like to use six on my new vehicle. The Cree MK-R LEDs are a good replacement for the XM-L easywhites but I haven't found them pre-soldered to stars in a neutral tint. All I can find are bare emitters, or pre-soldered "cool white"/blue tints. The MK-R LEDs are also $11 for the emitter only.

I'll update when I've done more. Weather has been nice and I'd love to start working my TC door panels with LEDs.

Interior illumination upgrade to LEDs

Reply #9 – May 10, 2013, 01:39:59 PM

As for how LEDs work - they are pretty straightforward. They are diodes so they move current one direction. LEDs are current limited rather than voltage limited, for the most part. If you supply DC power and limit the current to 1 Amp, the LED will run at whatever voltage it takes to use that 1 Amp, if high enough voltage is available. The LED drivers are the electronic circuits that do this current limiting. Taking a LED mounted on a star (copper or metal core pcb with pads to solder to) and using a pre-built LED drivers means you just need to hook up the wires correctly and supply adequate heatsinking for the amount of power that you wish to use. It's as simple as that. For small (3/5/8/10mm) LEDs, most can take 20mA max, with some rated for up to 100mA if you provide enough heatsinking through the legs. The heat has to go somewhere.

Making it look good is the difficult part. We don't want to just take a random heatsink, bolt it some place, and mount an LED to it. Lenses block light, but they also hide the ugliness.

I forgot to mention, my plans for the dome light is to (again) ditch the factory light with its opaque lens and use one of the few I have here that I pulled from junkyard cars. I don't remember what they are from, but I know Crown Vics have them, as do many early 90's Fords. They are pretty much all plastic, but the lenses are much better, and they bolt right in to our vehicles in the existing holes. The problem is that they are more narrow and the headliner shows an indent from where the stock dome light housing sat. I should reupholster my headliner anyway, so I plan on doing that and using black material.

Interior illumination upgrade to LEDs

Reply #10 – June 25, 2013, 02:32:48 AM

My other project that has been taking some of my time is below. Stock vs LED.

Interior illumination upgrade to LEDs

Reply #11 – October 25, 2014, 12:25:14 AM

Another year and a half has passed and LED technology keeps progressing. Anybody found a good set of LED drop-ins yet? http://www.vleds.com/ seems to have some nice stuff.

Tangent Rant:
I think I've bought 4 different LED headlamps over the last 10+ years. Each one blows the previous one out of the water. It seems like now, the companies have finally started using regulated output for most headlamps. All my current headlamps are unregulated. 4.5V at the battery means 4.5V to the LED. Since lumen output is nonlinear with respect to voltage, you'd get a headlamp that would put out advertised lumens for about 2 minutes using alkaline batteries. Then the light would slowly reduce to a dim burn over the next X hours. Regulated headlamps put out the same lumens from start to finish. Although, when your battery is fully discharged, the headlamp simply turns off instead of slowly dimming to near uselessness. I'd rather have all my light for as long as possible, thxplz!

Interior illumination upgrade to LEDs

Reply #12 – October 25, 2014, 03:56:05 AM

Quote from: JeremyB;439707

Another year and a half has passed and LED technology keeps progressing. Anybody found a good set of LED drop-ins yet? http://www.vleds.com/ seems to have some nice stuff.

Tangent Rant:
I think I've bought 4 different LED headlamps over the last 10+ years. Each one blows the previous one out of the water. It seems like now, the companies have finally started using regulated output for most headlamps. All my current headlamps are unregulated. 4.5V at the battery means 4.5V to the LED. Since lumen output is nonlinear with respect to voltage, you'd get a headlamp that would put out advertised lumens for about 2 minutes using alkaline batteries. Then the light would slowly reduce to a dim burn over the next X hours. Regulated headlamps put out the same lumens from start to finish. Although, when your battery is fully discharged, the headlamp simply turns off instead of slowly dimming to near uselessness. I'd rather have all my light for as long as possible, thxplz!

Not much has changed in years. Cree has their XP-L LED's out now, which provide the same output in a smaller package (more throw), but very few changes. I do have some lights with XM-L2 emitters that are pushing 5A each, but the XM-L itself wasn't far behind. The biggest difference the last couple years is white LED's approaching a CRI of around 95 while remaining a cooler color temperature than incandescent bulbs.

As far as products coming to market - regulated lights have always been around but manufacturers charged more because they could. Lots of products in stores for $20 now rival what used to cost $100 - supply and demand! I've moved to making my own lights for most things now.

I will be tackling more LED projects this winter, and hopefully start cutting nice products out of aluminum blocks. I will likely improve on the mockup designs above, and cnc out some nice housings instead. Then I will simply wait for LED's to actually more forward - getting one of the 300lm/1W emitters to market would be a great achievement.

Interior illumination upgrade to LEDs

Reply #13 – October 29, 2014, 06:00:17 PM

Awesome! Very nice work. Been working on LED retrofit myself. Got a hold of a freebie string of DC fed HI LEDS intended for recessed lighting. Each node has two LEDS, a 7805 voltage regulator and a current limiting resistor. My dome:

Just glued the LED node to the blown dome bulb and soldered the leads to the bulb contacts. Voila!

(Yeah, yeah, the headliner. Gimme a break, the PO is a paraplegic.) Gonna try my hand at casting LEDs into automotive bulbs with clear resin. We'll see how it goes.

Interior illumination upgrade to LEDs

Reply #14 – November 01, 2014, 01:15:00 AM

Quote from: skrimace;439890

Awesome! Very nice work. Been working on LED retrofit myself. Got a hold of a freebie string of DC fed HI LEDS intended for recessed lighting. Each node has two LEDS, a 7805 voltage regulator and a current limiting resistor. My dome:

Just glued the LED node to the blown dome bulb and soldered the leads to the bulb contacts. Voila!

(Yeah, yeah, the headliner. Gimme a break, the PO is a paraplegic.) Gonna try my hand at casting LEDs into automotive bulbs with clear resin. We'll see how it goes.

Nice! My issue is that if it doesn't put out enough heat to need a decently-sized heatsink to keep it under 100 degrees Celcius, it's not worth using! :p

On that note, I need to drive my map lights in my Insight at lower outputs. It can't be on while I'm driving, or I can't see out the windshield.