 ok so here are some pictues of my diy lights
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OK so what we have is 100 foot garden, the light actually has more spred and lights up the trees at the end much wider, allowing me to see the cat that sat on next doors chicken shed clearly, (on the left behind the other fence panel, you can just see the roof) the lights themselves have a water proof on off toggle, and a water proof dimmer that alters the current that the lights get. at 250 mA you get initial light which is just perfect for the roads, then at 500mA we get around 75% of the full beam, at 1 Amp we get the full beam, as i am using three LEDs in series they all get the same current, but the driver is unable to drive three LEDs in series at 3 amps, so we actually get around 900mA at top wack, giving me somewhere in the region of 800 lumens. the lens are 2 at 25 degres flood and 1 at 5 degrees spot, and the LEDs are cree p4s i think, will check at work tomorrow. i put a voltage indicator light on the top, this glows green at 14.4 volts down to 12 volts, then goes red, telling me the battery is running down. if i had not used the dimmer and the indicator then the whole unit would\only be around 2 inches long. the battery is a lithium polymer battery with 14.4 volts at 2.4 mAh giving me around 3 hours at full power. also looking at the pictures you do not see the shadow of the washing line on the hedge at the end that is seen with the eye. basically the pictues do not do it justice.
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| Edited: 14/09/08 22:31 |
 Spot on Serge 
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cost around £70 plus access to good machining workshop. to be honest it would be about £50 without the dimmer and indicator.
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 Serge nice, £50
wonder where all the money goes when "proper" lights cost so much.
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machining costs and VAT. plus you need to pay someones salarys.
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 Man that's a pro-job! Better than the Plumbing pipe job's I'm looking at building for winter
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Also that definately worth an article!
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 Nice work, totally variable dimming - great move How did you sort out the lenses....they seem they trickiest part
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 Nice work there, damn good output from the pics too. Aren't you using Seoul P4's 240Lumens Max jobs ?? Gives you a Max @720. CREE P4's are only 150Lumen max I think!!
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your right i am using seoul P4s
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just seen that the p7s are available, 900 lumens from a single chip. could make a light thats like a smarty tube with the sun coming out the end. only probel would be the optics coping with the heat. oh and the lens are available form dot light. so are the led holders so thats easy!
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buddabing....so you get it from ze germans eh. May have to build meself a set
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Serge, P7's are 4 LED's on 1 chip, so bigger you'd need different optics and need to be ran at 2800ma's to get the full 900Lumens. Wait for the CREE MCE's less wasteful projects light in a 120degree arc rather than 180degree for the SSC's and you can individually power each of the 4 LED's on it for different power settings.
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sorry dyl the P7 is 4 leds but the optics bubble is the same size so optics should fit. they have built them to be the same size as the others, i think its a 25mm star. see deal extream if you power each led seperatly then the drain on the battery in pwer is 4 times, ie 4 in series at 1 amp each is 1 amp, 4 in parrallel at one amp is 4 amps
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I think you need a bigger opening the LED bubble is bigger than a standard Cree Bubble, but can't see the SSC in the Hope 1 vision due to optics. And the Larger area needs custom optics to or something. P7's are only rated thermally to 2.8 Amps, Fv 3.6 so thats still 10watts+, MCE's are Max rated 2.8 amps aswell for 750lumens, advantage being you can switch 3 off for a lower power mode. Either way your going to need a big battery to power 3 x P7's or MCE's
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I have one of these in my cellar its 250 Ah should last you 90 hours.
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Get 1 of those bike trailers to lug it around with
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 Nice work Serge. Let me know if you want to sell it
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