I've been cruising the internet lately thinking I need another project and have money burning a whole in my pocket. One thing I've been wanting to build lately is an area light. This is the kind of light that you turn on at camp at night if you pull in late and have to set up camp. I also thought it would be handy for cooking and repairs.

There are different versions commercially available but I wanted to build something. Custom is always nice but I wanted something that would do the job and be much more affordable.

Hella makes a lot of different models but they are halogen and HID and will pull more juice than I want.

There are a few companies making led work lights and others are using the led light bars but they are all pretty expensive. They are really nice but out of my budget.

So here is what I'm thinking for making one. It'll be 4 high powered leds. 2 will be a spot and 2 will be a flood. I'm thinking 2 switches that will allow me to have the spots on, floods on or both. The leds will run at 1 amp per 2 leds and be housed in something that is cheap and give me different mounting options. Some guys are putting these lights on poles but I'm thinking magnet mount, swivel, roof rack mounted or free standing (Gorilla Pod). The plug will be a 12V cigarette lighter socket that will allow me to move it between vehicles and plug it into my porta power and take it anywhere.

I've ordered parts and hit up Home Depot so the damage has begun. I'm uploading some pictures now so I'll update. Any suggestions will be great. Currently my only concern will be heat. I've never made anything that runs 4 leds on 2 amps total so I'm not sure how hot this thing'll get. I've got some aluminum so I plan on making some heat sinks.

This is what is going to be giving it's life for the plug.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Area%20Light/DSC07482.jpg

It's a Type R so I know it's a good one.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Area%20Light/DSC07483.jpg


Drivers
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Area%20Light/DSC07474.jpg

This is my first time playing with optics. These are the spots.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Area%20Light/DSC07475.jpg

Floods
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Area%20Light/DSC07477.jpg


These hold the optics and are glued to the tops of the emitter stars.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Area%20Light/DSC07479.jpg

The optic snaps into the holder which is nice because I'll be able to swap out depending on my needs. I'm pretty sure this thing is going to be bright I just need to harness the light and make it work for me.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Area%20Light/DSC07480.jpg


From HD is got the usual stuff
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Area%20Light/DSC07426.jpg

I was looking for a housing and was going to use the metal inspection plate box thingys that are used for electrical wires. Metal conduit threads into the sides and these little slim boxes are at corners, junctions and areas where you need to inspect the wires or add on. I wasn't sure if they would work and they were around 10 bucks so I looked on. Copper is pretty expensive and couldn't find anything that fit my needs. The copper would be nice because it would act as a heat sink and dissipate the heat. Like with most projects I ended up in the PVC isle. It's cheap, comes in all kinds of sizes with little add ons and everything. Problem is that as a housing it won't dissipate heat so that remains an area of concern.

My haul
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Area%20Light/DSC07427.jpg

I'm thinking I'll use the clean out plug as a face and try to work in a lens. If I can't work one in I'll have to epoxy the heck out of the front around the optics holders which is fine as the optics snap in and out and the epoxy will seal up everything. I think I've got some dremel work ahead of me. The conduit things were heavy thick metal and I think they would be a bear to work with.

I actually got really far tonight but I have to take some more pictures and brain storm about my design a little more before I spend more time grinding, filing and gluing. I hope I'm not up all night thinking about this, I need my sleep.

I've made some LED lights using the buck pucks and stars. With no lens you get a basic flood from the LED. The LED projects zero heat! This means all the heat is at the base of the LED star. I used the arctic silver epoxy to glue them to aluminum bases. The conductive grease will work, but the epoxy work great in that you don't need to clamp the star down. I down loaded some engineering software and it showed these thing make some heat and the thicker I went the better the dissipation. So I bought some 3/8" thick aluminum to mount them too. If it's cool outside i.e. night time. the 2.5" sq aluminum dissipates the heat very nice and is only warm to the touch. I looked at PC heat sinks and there are still in the draw, as they take up more room. I found that by going thicker the software showed better results at getting the heat away from the led base and thats the reason behind the 3/8 aluminum. I bought enough aluminum to make like 15 setups for $9

My first one I use the buck puck with that comes with a dimmer, but the others are just like the ones you have. Deal-time has tons of deals on LEDs too. I made one with a red LED to help with night vision.

Now what is that device you have in the pic above? a strobe light??

Summery: use a thick alumunum base as a heat sink.

P.S. don't look at the light:shaking:

This is what is going to be giving it's life for the plug.

And you are chopping up a useable light for what reason?

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062263

where did you get those lenses and those leds/drivers?
I want to do something simillar except for permanent

ledsupply and dealtime have them

And you are chopping up a useable light for what reason?

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062263


I already had the light and it was a piece of junk.

I've made some LED lights using the buck pucks and stars. With no lens you get a basic flood from the LED. The LED projects zero heat! This means all the heat is at the base of the LED star. I used the arctic silver epoxy to glue them to aluminum bases. The conductive grease will work, but the epoxy work great in that you don't need to clamp the star down. I down loaded some engineering software and it showed these thing make some heat and the thicker I went the better the dissipation. So I bought some 3/8" thick aluminum to mount them too. If it's cool outside i.e. night time. the 2.5" sq aluminum dissipates the heat very nice and is only warm to the touch. I looked at PC heat sinks and there are still in the draw, as they take up more room. I found that by going thicker the software showed better results at getting the heat away from the led base and thats the reason behind the 3/8 aluminum. I bought enough aluminum to make like 15 setups for $9

My first one I use the buck puck with that comes with a dimmer, but the others are just like the ones you have. Deal-time has tons of deals on LEDs too. I made one with a red LED to help with night vision.

Now what is that device you have in the pic above? a strobe light??

Summery: use a thick alumunum base as a heat sink.

P.S. don't look at the light


This is not my first led project. I've got 6 rock lights and 4 emitters in 2 dome lights. Oh and I have an underhood light. For the most part I've got these Q5 crees running at 500 and 700 ma in different locations. I've used copper and aluminum as heat sinks and all is well.


I wired the area light tonight and I've got a heat problem. My dome lights get warm but not hot. This new light gets HOT. My IR thermometer says 150* with 4 leds running at 1000ma each. I'm thinking that I'm going to kick them down to 500ma or get some other drivers. What I do know is that currently my near one inch thick AL heat sink is too hot and I'm not about to shove it into an air tight housing.

I'm using all floods for the optics. The random ones in this pic are placeholders.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Area%20Light/DSC07464.jpg

Idea was for one switch for 2 spot leds and one for 2 flood. With the parts I have now I'll only be able to do all 4 on at once and at 500ma which might be the way to go.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Area%20Light/DSC07468.jpg

I'll experiment tomorrow and see how much or how much less heat I get when I notch it down.

I got the optics, holders and drivers at LED supply. I might have one of the 1000ma drivers up for sale as I think I'm only going to use 1.

My rocklights
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/DSC06780.jpg

This is my rear cargo light (2 crees), an added rear hatch light (2 crees) and my rear rock lights (2 crees)
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/DSC06029.jpg

Front dome
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/DSC06033.jpg

Underhood
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Under%20Hood%20Light/DSC06803.jpg

I've also done the domes in my wife's Subaru. Let's just say I've purchased quite a few expensive high out put leds.

I'd suggest getting them from cutter as you can pick your tint and bin.

I had some time today so I did a little rewiring and made a mount. I've got one switch now and it turns on all 4 leds and they are floods. They are running at 500ma so they run a lot cooler yet still put out light.

Light with mount
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Area%20Light/DSC07504.jpg

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Area%20Light/DSC07503.jpg

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Area%20Light/DSC07500.jpg

Then I had to wait for it to get dark.
Here it is from the other side of my back yard.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Area%20Light/DSC07497.jpg

Here it is with a 3' pvc "pole" setup looking across the yard.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Area%20Light/DSC07496.jpg

Here propped up on the roof.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Area%20Light/DSC07492.jpg

Nice Mike! :smokin: How much for one delivered to Pismo? :D

Cost wasn't much for the most part. It's all homemade looking because it's random parts from here and there. I think that if I was going to make a couple I'd have to come up with something a little different. You need one of these for your trailer.

ONe would be sweet for the trailer. I was thinking of eventually adding a battery to it anyways. How long do you think one of these would run off a deep cycle battery? Or I guess if you were using it off your vehicle battery, how long before you would be worried about it not starting.?

It would be cool to have one that I could use no matter what vehicle/trailer I was using. I guess there are so many uses for it, that's why I like it so much.:smokin:

I'm jealous of Ken and your electrical prowess.

This light runs off of 1 amp. My porta power jump start pack has a 5 amp hour battery. Technically this light would run 5 hours on it. I believe a vehicle battery has like 100 amp hours but I'm not sure and there are many different batteries out there. The regulator will run down to 9V I believe and maintain the 1 amp which means the light will not dim and your vehicle battery will not get below 9V (but by that time you're SOL anyways).

I haven't done any long testing yet to see how hot it gets. My first design that ran at 2 amps was brighter and got very hot. I knocked down the power and drilled some vent holes so hopefully this will help.

pretty cool, How much money do you have in materials?

I'd say around 70 bucks. I have some parts left over. Maybe for another one.

Where's a good spot to get the LEDs / housings pre-made?

I want to swap out all my 12v lights in the RV with LEDs :D and I'd rather not spend shitloads of $ on the replacement "LED BULBS" they sell in the RV mags.

A lot of the premade stuff is unregulated over seas junk. They have bad tint, poor connections and don't last long. If you find someone in the states that makes something it's probably much better than the autozone equivilent.

Speaking of cheap over seas checkout Deal Extreme. They have regulators to run leds which are necessary for the 12v systems. Figure out how many lights you want to replace, how you want to do it and go from there. There are different ways of wiring the leds depending on brightness.

Where's a good spot to get the LEDs / housings pre-made?

I want to swap out all my 12v lights in the RV with LEDs :D and I'd rather not spend shitloads of $ on the replacement "LED BULBS" they sell in the RV mags.

sorry I said deal time and it's deal extreme. Opps. It's like going to Walmart they have a ton of chit and most of it you don't need.:homer:

http://www.dealextreme.com/products.dx/category.410

nothing jumped out for RV replacement.

This mofo will burn your eye balls out :grinpimp:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.2394
But you need to run a buck puck (http://www.ledsupply.com/wired-buckpuck.php)like shown above, the ones on dealextreme have been junk so far.

Sorry if this seems like a hyjacking your area light thread, just trying to answer his question.

No worries on hijacking.

All of my projects have used the Q5 XR-E's. They are very bright and rugged. At one amp they do get hot so you've got to build in some heatsinking. If you don't I suppose you'll have a hazard but the heat will lower the light output and decrease the life of the emitter. I've read good and bad about the crees from DX. I guess their tints are not consistant or not as claimed but it's hard to beat when you get the quanity discounts. I like being able to pick my tint for some of the projects. Other projects it's less important.

Thanks for the ideas.

I`m going to start a new thread and post some pics and ask for some other info... I don't need blinding lights to illuminate the inside of the RV :laughing: I just want something that runs cooler, draws less energy, and is brighter than the current bulbs in there.

This will be helpful for you
http://www.leddynamics.com/LuxDrive/datasheets/2008B-PowerPuck.pdf

You can run 9 in a ring/chain but it depends on the leds you use and their required volatage. If these are going to be put in an RV with existing housings you're set. All you really need is a hunk of AL for a heatsink or buy premade heatsinks and stick the led on it with thermal epoxy.

Mike ever use the red LED's? I showed this to a buddy as his into LED's too. He really liked the idea you have here. They make some min sq fans you could mount on that thing if you have not solved your heat issue when running full blast. You could rob one from an old video card, but most of those are 5vdc

http://www.fanwholesale.com/30mm-fans-c-2.html?gclid=CN612dm_wpwCFRlcagodg3skoQ

http://www.fanwholesale.com/images/30mm_fan_EC3007M12CA.jpg

Heat issued was solved by kicking them down to 500ma and 1 amp for the whole light. It was running on 2 amps before and got real hot real fast. Now it only gets warm and is similar to my other projects. I have thought of fans but they really aren't necessary. If I were to build a bigger brighter light I'd consider it. Without the fan the housing is a bit more sealed which is something I was shooting for.

I ran the light for an hour and a half the other night and it only got up to 120* out of the front. I think it was about the same inside.

Oh and I haven't messed around with red ones. I was considering it for the whole night vision thing but haven't gotten around to it. Maybe the next project.

I bought some red stars and just need actually make some lights up.:shaking: I have a white star dome light, but thinking of adding some red under dash lights. Just something to light up where your feet go. The white light is great for finding stuff in the cab, but would be nice to not loose night vision when just jumping in and out of the cab when out in the forest at night.

I just pick up one of these to use as a dimmer, vs the dimmer you get with the Buck Puck. This has a much nicer knob for daily use. I drilled a hole in the dash and mounted it. The plan is to make the dome light adjustable and the under dash lights come on when the doors are open.

Can you post a pic of you dual hatch light? I just sanded some plexiglass to give the light a frosted looked vs using the flood lens you show in you area light.

Nice outdoor fire pitt:smokin:

Ebay $15

I don't have any close up pictures of the hatch light. I pulled it from a early 90's s-10 blazer. I liked it because it has a switch built into the housing. When the switch is in the on position it turns on when you open the door and off when you close it.

My buddy did some white footwell lights in his 4runner but I'm having some trouble finding the link.

Made up a couple puddle lights to run off the dome light switch. These will be used under the dash to light up the foot well.

http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=488775&stc=1&d=1261509710

how do I get my dome light that bright? nice!

how do I get my dome light that bright? nice!

I used a 228 lum at 1000ma LED and a 1000ma driver and made one. Cost was about $20 and I can't believe I lived with that stock light for 4 years:shaking:

I sure mike did his a bit different, I used a chunk of aluminum as a heat sink.

http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=491769&d=1262707234

http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=491770&d=1262707234

so basically I select the proper driver based on the output required by the LED itself? I have a regular cab shortbed silverado so a single 1000ma LED and driver would probably be sufficient for my needs.

whats a good source for these materials?

I just order some 350-400 ma drivers from deal extreme. They have not arrived yet. LED supply will have the drivers. For like $2 more you can get one that have an adjustment on the back to adjust the light. With a dome light I figured it would be on for like 5 mins max, so heat was not a huge issue. But the aluminum block was sanded down to fit into the rail on the roof. I used some heat sink grease on the block to the roof, so the roof will help out if the door is left open for a long time.
LED's produce zero heat in the light, so all the heat is in the base of
led.

I used a 228 lum at 1000ma LED and a 1000ma driver and made one. Cost was about $20 and I can't believe I lived with that stock light for 4 years:shaking:

I sure mike did his a bit different, I used a chunk of aluminum as a heat sink.

http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=491769&d=1262707234

http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=491770&d=1262707234


Mine looks pretty much the same. I used the buck puck (but a 700ma one) and 2 cree Q5's. The stars are jb welded onto a chuck of AL and glued into the housing just like shown. I have 2 crees in the rear cargo light as well as an addition hatch light. These are really handy when unloading or setting up camp. I'm actually in the process of putting 4, 5mm leds into the same light for a dimmer light. The 2 crees will wake a sleeping baby (I've got one of those) and also make a wife complain that the light is too bright. Plus if she needs the light back there, while with the baby (we do a lot of traveling) it's really distracting for me while driving.

I've also installed a red cree in the front dome for me while night driving. It's on a 350 ma buck puck toot or something like that.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/DSC06029.jpg

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/DSC06033.jpg

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Red%20Dome%20Light/DSC07788.jpg

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Red%20Dome%20Light/DSC07789.jpg

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Red%20Dome%20Light/DSC07790.jpg