Blue Vs Royal Blue?

ResQTech

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I want to make some 'strobing' Luxeon emergency/warning lights for my car. What color would be more appropriate, blue or royal blue?
 

Rothrandir

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well, rb has a higher lumen rating i believe.

but the main problem is i believe any blue lights (especially strobing!) would be illegal. something about emergency vehicals using them...
 

Flow

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Mabey he can get away with it working for the fire dept. ^_^

I would say be nice and use blue though. Doesn't RB emit some UV as well?
 

Entropy

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[ QUOTE ]
Rothrandir said:
well, rb has a higher lumen rating i believe.

but the main problem is i believe any blue lights (especially strobing!) would be illegal. something about emergency vehicals using them...

[/ QUOTE ]
Actually, RB doesn't even have a lumen rating because it's so close to the edge of the human eye's response curve. Blue will likely appear a LOT brighter than RB.

RB is neat because of its ability to make stuff fluoresce, not because it appears brighter.

Cyan is the brightest, dunno if that's close enough to blue for fire department strobe work.
 

The_LED_Museum

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I'd think cyan is out of the picture here, because it so often leans toward - and looks like - GREEN.
Regular blue might look brighter, but royal blue is a more eye catching color. For emergency vehicles though, use the regular blue and not the royal kind. Just my opinion though; your results may vary.
 

Rothrandir

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yes entropy, a while ago lumileds changed the rb binning structure to rate it in photometric power. i do believe that the lumileds blue isn't that stunning though. royal blue should be a better use for getting attention, and possibly appear brighter as such. depending on the actual led, i would say that i would use a royal blue for this purpose.
 

Slick

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You'd want straight blue. I have both blue and royal blue luxeons, and can tell you that the blue is about the same brightness as the cyan. Royal blue on the other hand, would best be described as a "dark" type of light.

If you have the option to build your light using arrays of individual colors, then I say to use 2 or 3 blues to each royal blue. I feel the the hue of the straight blue is less "rich" in depth and may not yeild color saturation equal to a red.

The best bet would be to get one of each and experiment. at most you'd wind up with one left over and you could do something else with it. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 

ResQTech

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Thanks for all the replies guys, I think Ill go with regular blue. Now my next question. Ive been thinking about this and Id like to make 2 modules of 3 Luxeons each, one module for each side of my dash. I thought that the easiest way to do this would be to use the Fraen Optics since they have a nice base. I would get a metal plate long enough to fit all 3 LS's and secure the optics and LSs to the plate. Now, the hard part... Id like to make some attention getting patterns. Since I have 3 on each side i have a wide variety of patterns that I could make. The question is, what would be the best way to get them to strobe the patterns?? Id like to find the cheapest method possible with good results.
 

IsaacHayes

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I'm sure some sort of 555 or simalir circuit timer would be the simplest. Not sure how much of a pattern you could get, but you'd have them flashing..

Also check out car neon control boxes. There are several different brands. I belive they have settings to make them chase, strobe, etc. That might be your easiest way to control them. Allthough I'm not sure how much power they can handle. I know a 20" neon interior car tube pulls 500ma.
 

ResQTech

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Anyone ever see those "personal" led units for runners, bikes, etc. It's got 5 little LEDs usually red in color. They run off 3V i believe, but they have nice patterns. Is there any way i can use that circuit to run Luxeons? Im guessing putting 12 volts in would fry that circuit and they probably only output a couple mA per LED.
 

shankus

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You would use the output of those LEDs to drive transistors, that can supply the needed current.

Someone with circuit design skills will chime in here to give you some ideas.
 
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