Lumicycle Halogen to LED conversion with piccies and a step by step guide.

nice 😉

Fd

looks good PS

that switch will work with the Bflex but for the ebay drivers it will have to be a lockable switch, not a momentary one.

I've just ordered some of that heatshrink, it does look much better than insulation tape.

the difference between the HID and your conversion is massive 😆

Are the XPG specif optics the same size as the cutters?

Externally the XPG opitics are exactly the same as the XPE.

Link to XPG Cute 3 datasheet:
http://www.ledil.com/datasheets/DataSheet_Cute-3-XP-G.pdf

Link to XPE Cute 3 datasheet:
http://www.ledil.com/datasheets/DataSheet_Cute-3-XP.pdf

I originally wanted a narrow spot but as Trout mentioned above the XPG adds 8deg to the XPE optic, which has actually worked out really well, so the XPE optic is fine.

Simple retrofit when the new optics become available 😉

Fd

Finished doing mine today with the XPG's and the other parts recommended by Chucky. Took about 1 1/2 hrs, most of which was spent trying to get the parts into the can. Apart from getting heatsink paste EVERYWHERE I had no problems at all. Am yet to give it an off-road test but the light seems way brighter than my 20W halogen. Many Thanks for the easy to follow guidelines!

My pleasure.

The cutter stuff has just arrived for you guys waiting.

I have not opened up the package yet, but it looks like we got away with no VAT or Import tax 😀

I'll try and get the stuff sorted in the next few days and posted out at the weekend at the latest.

Will also do my Lumi HID conversion with photo's and a detailed how to as well, for those of you who asked for it.

cheers

Chuck

Cool nice work sir – that's the best news in ages.

I guess these XPGs are all cool white? Be interested to know how you folks get on with them from a perceived contrast point of view.

i'm confused, never having anything to do with elec-tricks before, but i'm also intrigued AND i have a housemate with a soldering iron.

i've two lumi halogen cans and a 14.4v (i think) endurance battery (the biggest one lumi offered at the time of buying (~2 years ago)).

the DRIVER does what exactly? controls the amount of power reaching the LEDs so that they don't blow? does it have to be the same one that Chucky listed easrly on? will 700mA, 1000mA or 1400mA (click here) be ok?

judging by some of the pics (sequence of three on the first page) these things are silly bright. i find 35w/38 deg halogen is enough for most riding.
warm white, cold white, XRE, XPG. what should one order? also, narrow or medium angle lens? is the narrow enough when using the XPG bulbs?

many thanks

J

You guys all have mail reference me posting the stuff out. (after you have paid of course) 😆

Alpin, your battery is probably a 14.8volt one.
The drivers you have linked to as far as I can see are for up to 6volt.

The ones I used are for up to 24volt.

I have not tried an XPG yet, but looking at the ones that have come with this order from cutter, my view would be a triple XPG R4 with a narrow optic.

The mediums are a bit too wide for me.

This would give in the order of about 700 plus lumens (if not a bit more)

Chucky

The R4 has a nominal output of 130 lm, driven at 1000mA it's 2.5 times that, giving 325 lm.

x3 should give 975 lm. (an XPG R5 would be 1042 lm)

These are datasheet numbers so are to some degree theoretical, I'm not sure how to calculate/measure losses in the system to get the real figure though.

Only taking into account the lumen measurement of a light is like only taking into account the BHP figure of a car. A datasheet lumen measure will only tell you the theoretical total maximum light output according to the manufacturers of the LED units.

Much more important, IMHO, is the colour temperature and beam pattern, the latter determining the illuminance (Lux) figure, or the amount of light per square metre. Beam pattern preferences will also vary from rider to rider, and I reckon flexibility is the key.

Great Thread.

All 3 factors have importance. But, so long as I've a fair few lumens, then I can suffer a warmer than prefect colour temp and less than optimal beam pattern. ( I prefer cool light, flood on the bars, spot on the helmet )

We're compromised by having to source off the shelf parts.

I like this conversion and I'm looking forward to seeing more beam shots, before/after and end result pictures of the build people will be doing.

🙂

L.

The spectral intensity of sunlight peaks at about 600nm wavelength with a smooth curve at either end(visbile light being around 400nm to 700nm ish). The ideal output for a bike light would be a similar profile giving 'daylight' feel to it. Unfortunenately I don't think that's possible with LEDs.
The XPG has a significant spike at about 450nm, the blue end of the spectrum, and relatively little at the 600nm end. This is why they have a bluey, ice white kind of colour. In my experience can this can lead to contrast issues, particularly with a helmet light on its own.
Has anyone tried a multi LED setup with differing BIN lamps to try and construct a sunlight like spectrum? Maybe that should be the next project 😕

bloody hell lad's, this is getting a bit techy.

It's amazing how Wikipedia can make an expert out of anyone! 😉

I'd be happier if you could get LED's that match the 'look' of the light from the halogen lumi's. I find the warmer light helps make out details and stuff. Can't really describe why.
That is my only concern about doing the conversion.
Was totting up the cost of it all last night and it's looking like £40 or so with the heatsinks & stuff.
Will get round to ordering it at some point. Need to get a soldering iron as well from somewhere. The other half is excellent at soldering so no worries there.

The ebay bloke doesn't have any of the drivers at the moment; he has the screw fitting one (rather than solder) but presumably that's loads bigger.

Cutter do a multi colour temp triple board (with three different tint LEDs on the same board)
Its all to do with colour rendering, depth perception of colour temperature & contrast ratios.
Not to mention that natural light comes from above & bike lights from your bike (so the angle of reflection becomes an issue)

Yeah, sunlight is very 'orange', though nothing like as orange as tungsten filament lighting (old school incandescent lightbulbs).

At low light levels, the rods in our retinas are much more sensitive than the cones (the 'colour receptors'). The peak of the rod response is around 500nm, a blue-ish-green colour, which unfortunately is something of a gap in the available spectrum of both 'white' LEDs of all colour temperatures and monochromatic colour LEDs. At least one light design on Instructables advocates using cyan or green LEDs close to the peak rod response in order to get the best visual response for the actual light output. Researching this a bit further, I found that many people who tried this simply found that it made everything look a bit too weird to be usable.

Interesting thread on colour rendition here including using two different Cree MCE colour bin LED types to get a better compromise of overall light colour. Also, comments from one guy who said he used a red LED for jogging and didn't notice the colour after a few minutes until he got back into the vicinity of white-ish light.

It's pretty simple really – sight has evolved with sunlight, so our eyesight is best suited to wavelengths in that spectrum (orangey/yellow).

Amber LED lights, anyone?

All very interesting . . . just back from a 2 hour run round the local hills with an XP-G triple bar lamp and an XP-G triple helmet lamp, the bar one is the Lumi HID conversion I did and the helmet one is a standard lumi halogen case running with the eBay 970mA regulator with my own 7mm thick slug behind the LED's . . . a very tight fit which I wasn't sure I could get it to work . . . but it does, just . . .

So long as you keep moving the small case temp is fine, but if you stop for any length of time you need to switch off, it only takes a few minutes for the temp to start rising rapidly . . . but I can live with that . . . this is with an ambient of only a few C . . .

One thing that is noticable is that the helmet lamp appears brighter, when in reality it isn't . . . I guess it being more or less co-axial with your eyes makes for better reflection . . .

Anyway . . . on the colour balance side of things, I don't notice them as being markedly blue (when riding) at all . . . I also had a 20W lumi halogen to make some comparisons and it looks terrible, dull, and nothing like as good (and twice the power consumption) . . . the LED output is very nice, makes a HID look very monochromatic . . .

Anyways, on the way back down the hill I have to use about 600M of more or less single track public road, unlit (middle of nowhere), between trails . . . I had both lights on full bung, and encountered two cars, both pulled into passing places and stopped as I passed 😉 . . . I guess they can't work out the two vertically placed, very bright, lights are so stop (sensible drivers around here) . . . 😉

Sounds spot on FD.

just printing postage labels etc ready for posting all this order.

Hopefully people will post on here to say how they have gone on with their conversions.

about to swap my XRE for the triple XPG's.

300-400 lumens extra for no extra drain, just what the doctor ordered.

ironically some of the guys we ride with think that a car is behind us on the unlit roads when me and a mate are riding alongside each other. 😆

Chucky

when I am just behind you with my lights I just thank god we ban Lycra on our outtings!!!!

Nige, When you are behind me with your twin set-up I can see bugger all!! Even with 1000lumens

and for that i'm wearing Lycra next week 😈

fergusd – some questions:

How did you establish you need to turn it off?
Does your driver have a thermal overload? and is it being tripped?
Have you got any external heatsinking?

I'm using the bFlex driver with 5 power levels and I was planning on dipping it to lowest level when I stop, so I don't blind people for one thing and to control the temp. Hadn't planned on having to turn it off though.

> How did you establish you need to turn it off?

Burned fingers after 10 minutes spent watching a herd of deer.

> Does your driver have a thermal overload? and is it being tripped?

No I'm using the 5 quid ebay job rather than the 20 quid bFlex, secondly I have no use for bFlex functionality in a helmet lamp and lastly given the heatsink slug I am using there is no room for a bFlex. A bFlex in this case is a waste of money.

> Have you got any external heatsinking?

Yes but not fitted 😉 . . . My ideal objective is a lightweight helmet lamp, any mass reduction is welcome and I thought I'd see just how usable a non heatsinked version was . . .

If you reduce current to 500mA with the XP-G the heat output is negligible . . . so cutting to 1/2 power means you have no heat issue . . . I'm runing things at 1000mA (max drive current) where heat is much more of a problem . . .

Thanks fergus

Maiden voyage with mine tomorrow night. Max setting is 1000mA but I do have an external heatsink. Plan was to run the majority of the time at less than full power and only crank it up when I really need it.

Have a good one, you'll be fine on max all the time in this weather . . . enjoy 😉

@Chucky

If you somehow end up with enough spare bits for a Lumi can conversion, let me know, I'd be interested. Can source a driver myself, really just LEDs and optics I need, but a spare driver wouldn't go amiss.

Ta.

You might be lucky Dr, i'll let you know in a few days.

It will only be the LED and optic though.

No problem @Chucky, that should be enough to tinker with when I get round to it. Let me know what you got and how much, email in profile.

Have been running my Lumi can as per Chucky's build but with XPG's for a couple of days now. On my 45 minute commute the can hardly gets warm, which I've found a little strange. I'm hoping it's not getting ed hot inside!!! (It used to get very hot with my 20W halogen). The light is more 'white' than the halogen but brighter IMO.

If you are only driving them at 650mA then they won't produce that much heat . . .

Regardless . . . your halogen bulb was about 2-3% efficient so produced about 17 watts of heat . . . your LED setup is probably ITRO 20% efficient and in your case probably only produces ~5 watts of heat . . .

Sorry to be very lazy and not reading this lot, but I have the old 13.2V Halogen lumi set sitting doing nothing. Is this convertable?

@oldgit – Yes!

There is currently a shortage of drivers, has anybody tried to squeeze in the 650mA version with screw terminals??

There is currently a shortage of drivers, has anybody tried to squeeze in the 650mA version with screw terminals??

I was thinking the same, So I bought one and then I was going to De-solder the connector. The MINUTE I paid for it and I get an email from the seller saying that the solder connection drivers are due in at the end of next week.

Typical. 🙁

*Update* the seller has agreed for me to swap a connector type for the solder type when they arrive. What a gentleman. 😀

The guy selling the drivers on eBay seems like a sound chap. I contacted him regarding the inner workings of the dimming / shutdown pin and he put he straight on to the data sheet of the main chip used in the circuit. I could now bypass him completely and reverse engineer his board, but at that price, there's not much point.