LED Breakthrough…2X More Efficient than ANYTHING

adrrain67 over at digg.com writes, “LEDs are fantastic. But for a long time, they’ve been fantastic more because of what we think they can do than what they actually do. We’ve been pretty sure that LEDs can produce warm, white light at efficiencies far beyond even the much-touted compact fluorescent bulbs. But we’ve yet to actually see that.

I bought this RLM type industrial reflector to put in our carport, with the intention of lighting it with LEDs. The first iteration involve a string of white LED Christmas lights mounted through holes drilled in a board. Then I thought about a 110 VAC LED lamp, but most are down firing and wouldn’t use the reflector. Now I am looking at an LED driver puck like this, and a Cree LED mounted on a heatsink.

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LED Festoon Bulb Replacement

I bought some “Chrome” surface mount LED modules from Oznium.com to see how they’d work as replacements for automotive Festoon light bulbs (the ones with the pointy ends). The modules are about 2.3″ (60 mm) long with an adhesive strip on the back. The “chrome” is plastic.

Oznium actually sells some LED Dome Light replacements that are 5×5 LED arrays that include common bases with the LED array.

I thought that these modules would fit inside the BMW Bavaria trunk light housing that uses a 8.5 x 37.4 mm Festoon bulb.

The photograph showing the trunk is a little misleading – it’s actually about 4 times brighter than the bulb with the filament – you’d have to strain to read by the light.