So since I’ve been tinkering with the car a bit, I decided to tackle one of the projects revisions that I’ve been wanting to do.
I have not liked the Color rendering of the LEDs in my dome light that I modified.
And for those who don’t know what color rendering is, the quick version is the ability of light produce color on objects. its get really complicated but the yellow street lights that make you look all the same color have a low CRI (color rendering index) at around 30. A standard light bulb has a CRI of 100. meaning it renders color 100% essentially. Fluorescent and LEDs usually have a CRI of 80 which is what most artificial light is standard at.
So what’s the problem? Well, LEDs themselves cannot be “white”. They can look white but they do not produce 100% white light. Its works by 1 of 2 ways. 1.) A combination of Blue Diode and Yellow substrate which most/all 5mm or similar LEDs are. They are the Cheaper kind. or 2.) They are Blue LEDs that are behind a White Phosphor which will react to blue light. The mix of phosphor determines the color of the light and the CRI.
Bottom line if something like a red LED only puts out red light, things can only reflect red light. red things look red and blue things look black because they don’t reflect red. Believe it or not that is the short version.
So my first install looked like this. As you can see everything looks the same color while in fact they are not. If your working in the back and trying to locate a red wire is somewhat challenging.
Old LED setup:
This is the new LEDs that I acquired from work. These require a heat sink of some kind to keep the heat away from the leds. A piece of sheet Aluminum is more than enough.
Its pretty thin.
Black finishes the inside of the dome:
It looks pretty sexy so far.
So to recap this is the old output and appearance.
And here is the new LED Strip. So much win.
This is without the lens on because its super bright without it.
This is a super overexposed shot to show the difference front to back.
