VoltLog's Custom T10 Automotive LEDs Are a Major Improvement Over Off-the-Shelf Equivalents
After cheap off-the-shelf lamps kept failing, Florian C. has built his own — and the quality is markedly higher.
Florin "VoltLog" C. found T10 automotive LED lamps available on the open market to be of insufficient quality for his needs — so, naturally, set about building one himself, complete with constant current driver.
"I plan to use this in my car for the interior lights which were initially fitted with these incandescent bulbs," VoltLog explains. "They shine a pretty yellowish light, and so the idea was to switch to some LED lights which would provide a cleaner white light while at the same time providing increased light output — also a consequence is they would be consuming less power."
"My first solution was to try various T10 LED bulbs from AliExpress, and to be honest it took a while due to long deliver times and the various models I had to try out before I found once that were close to my needs. The number one issue that was present with these AliExpress bulbs was the light output color, which was this bluish tint. It probably was something upwards of 6,500 K. Issue number two was reliability, because once I found the ones that were outputting a better color I was installing them and within three months they started failing."
Rather than spend more time buying off-the-shelf lamps and experimenting, VoltLog decided to make his own. "I picked some high quality Cree LEDs that would fit the purpose," he says. "These have a forward voltage of 3V, they have a high CRI of over 95 and I can pick from a variety of output colors, after a bit of experimenting, I ended up going with 4000K which is this nice neutral white."
"Next I had to figure out how to drive these at constant current and really here I needed to decide between a switch mode drive and a linear driver. A switch mode driver would be more efficient, generating less heat but it will need more parts, which would increase the cost and complexity so in the end I went with a linear driver, which is the AL5809. This is a nice two terminal device, it comes in a variety of current presets and you just place it in series with your LEDs."
VoltLog has written more about the project on his website, while detailed look at the resulting lamps and the decisions that went into its design can be found on the VoltLog YouTube channel.