LED headlights

[joey_picus]

I am planning on using some quite big LEDs on Swift to point out of the front of the robot to create a bit of a 'headlight' effect.
Unfortunately, not having any clue about LEDs, I have no clue what sort of power levels are required, and finding reasonably sized, unidirectional, available-in-a-pleasing-variety-of-colours LEDs that will run happily on 12V has not been going well so far - the main market appears to be car mods, and I'm a bit wary of those due to quality and current consumption.

Can anyone from the general hivemind share what they've found or would advise?

[adamclark]

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/rolson-in-...TB9BoCHtXw_wcB

rolson-in-car-12v-led-torch.jpg

[R9000]

What about some of those DIY garden lights that are meant to be set into a patio? They'll mount in your armour nicely, plus they'll be tough because they're designed to stand up to being walked all over. https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Product...FUYcGwod238Ppw

[daveimi]

Take an led torch to bits.

[joey_picus]

Thanks for the replies so far. I'm thinking I should maybe have made clearer that I'm really after a solution that runs off 12v/24v - anyone got any experience outside of LED tape?

[R9000]

It's not hard to rig up a little board with a couple of resistors and LEDs yourself. Each one will use around 3V, assuming you're going for white LEDs. Why not get some stripboard/veroboard and prototype it?

[adamclark]

running four in series works which will drop 4x3v = 12v

[R9000]

And then just put strings of four in parallel for more.