Good, compact, and square or round driving lamp?

[jeffsf]

What do you find unusual about [the California definitions for auxiliary lighting]

Whether it is "unusual" or not, at least as I read the code, if I mount lamps at and don't run more than four "lamps" at a time (ref. 24405):

12-16"

• "Fog" lamps
  • Can be run with "headlamps" (beam unspecified)
  • 4" drop at 25' (which, I agree, is reasonable aiming for fog lamps to be used in conditions where backscatter is an issue; fog, rain, snow, ...)

16-24"

• "Fog" lamps
  • Can be run with "headlamps" (beam unspecified)
  • 4" drop at 25'
• "Driving" lamps
  • Upper beam only
  • No explicit requirements on beam pattern in Division 12 (see further CVC 24409 on dimming of headlamps, and similar)

24-30"

• "Fog" lamps
  • Can be run with "headlamps" (beam unspecified)
  • 4" drop at 25'
• "Driving" lamps
  • Upper beam only
  • No explicit requirements on beam pattern in Division 12
• "Passing" lamps
  • Lower beam, upper beam permissible
  • No explicit requirements on beam pattern in Division 12

30-42"

• "Driving" lamps
  • Upper beam only
  • No explicit requirements on beam pattern in Division 12
• "Passing" lamps
  • Lower beam, upper beam permissible
  • No explicit requirements on beam pattern in Division 12

Since auxiliary lights don't bear information on them if they are "designed for supplementing the lower/upper beam" and "fog" lights don't have a definition at all in the CVC that I have found, it seems rather unclear why one would not claim that any light mounted from 24-42" above the road surface is a "passing" lamp and, hence, could be operated with either upper or lower headlamp beams, with no explicit specification on beam pattern in this Division. With my Mini's bumper/hood junction at 21.5", something like the Diode Dynamics SS3 units get me to the "call it what you want" height of 24".

Yes, I'd mount fog lamps low to reduce the impact of backscatter on visibility. Yes, in applicable conditions, it only makes sense to run them with low beams, both properly aimed.

The rest of Division 12 on mounting height and permissible combinations seems rather convoluted. Not surprising as much of it dates back to 1957, long before the US allowed greater headlamp intensity and, later, decided that sealed-beam lamps weren't the best thing going.

 

[-Virgil-]

Since auxiliary lights don't bear information on them if they are "designed for supplementing the lower/upper beam"

Yes, they do. There are SAE and/or ECE function markings on any legitimate auxiliary lamp.

it seems rather unclear why one would not claim that any light mounted from 24-42" above the road surface is a "passing" lamp and, hence, could be operated with either upper or lower headlamp beams

What is the point of being pedantic like this? Auxiliary high beam lamps (driving lamps) are for use with high beams. If you use them with low beams, you'll be throwing glare all over the road and you can (and should!) get a ticket for it. Fog lamps aren't beneficial with high beams. I think you already know this, so...

something like the Diode Dynamics SS3 units

I thought you wanted to talk about legitimate lights worth buying/having/using.

get me to the "call it what you want" height of 24".

Again, why play these games? Are you interested in going "ha ha ha, I'm so smart, I can figure out how to argue how I get to use my lights whenever I want", or are you interested in seeing better?

 

[jeffsf]

If I wasn't interested in usable, safe lighting, I wouldn't have posted at all. There are, however, the realities of the world that need to be accounted for.

On understanding the legal status of the lighting and its use, one needs to be prepared for the inevitable traffic stop and be able to point to the applicable code, and potentially labeling of the lamps involved. The Hella 350, looking like "one of those &^%$, illegal, off-road light bars", perhaps invites more scrutiny by law enforcement than even a pair of old-school, round, halogen reflectors would (which are already "cop magnets"). Fabrication of mounting brackets and installation of wiring isn't a quick task, and isn't inexpensive if one doesn't have their own milling and/or welding equipment. Knowing that if I fabricate brackets that mount a pair of lamps at 24-30" means that I have options should I find that the initially selected lamps do not provide the lighting that I desire, or my needs change in the future.

There are also physical and cost constraints. There aren't any 90 mm housings that I have found that would allow them to be mounted above the bumper. Mounting anything in front of the bumper means you'll have them bent by parallel parkers, if not destroyed completely.

On the Diode Dynamics lights, in contrast to much of the market, they are SAE J581 or SAE J583 compliant (as appropriate for the beam pattern) as I mentioned in post #16. They are supposedly US designed and manufactured. They appear to have a reasonable collimation and lens system that appears to have had reasonable design tools and effort put into it. They use Luxeon X ES emitters, which aren't bottom-of-the-barrel, whatever was left over on the reel from the other job emitters. Unfortunately, aftermarket automotive lighting doesn't come with the equivalent of LM-79 and IES data, nor do I have the test equipment to measure it myself (or the financial resources to purchase a collection of lamps). I respect that the two of you have information that those outside of the industry are not privy to. However, I'm not sure if you've dismissed those lamps by the name (or lack of its recognition) alone, or with some knowledge of the lights themselves.

The Hella 350 remains an interesting driving light to me. Its reduced height and shallow install depth certainly are an advantage over even something like the JW Speaker 8801 4x6 units. It is certainly on my list for auxiliary, long-range lighting. Were it two, 6-9"-wide units (or, for example, 75-100 mm square/round, pedestal mount) that I could splay slightly to get the broader illumination with my existing high beams that I'm looking for they would already be on order. If either of you are aware of something along those lines, I would certainly appreciate pointers.

 

[-Virgil-]

If you get stopped for your driving light/s, you deserve the ticket. Why? Because if there's anyone in front of you to object to the light from your driving light/s...

...you shouldn't have been running your driving light/s! No matter who made them or what the lens markings say.

Will Diode Dynamics cough up dependable beam data (isoplot, bird's-eye, etc)?

Also, about fog lamps being "J583 compliant": you really want to check which category they're certified as. If it's F, that's a truly antique standard that allows pathetic performance and excessive upward stray light. The F3 category is many decades newer and requires much better performance and much less upward stray light. It's not as simple as "F means bad and F3 means good", because there have been some good F-class fog lamps over the years, most of them before F3 existed. But if someone's going to the trouble of designing, tooling, and producing fog lamps in this day and age (in the last 12 years or so), and they put out an F lamp rather than an F3 lamp, that's a pretty clear signal or sign that they didn't know, didn't care, or didn't bother.

Many of these cube/block type LED lamps with four emitters behind a lens do OK in their driving lamp versions; that's not a difficult task. Most of them are very underwhelming as fog lamps, because putting a spreader lens in front of an LED spot beam to "stretch" it horizontally into a fog beam is a half-cooked, lazy way to do the job -- and that's generally the kind of result that is obtained.

 

[Marcturus]

Will Diode Dynamics cough up dependable beam data (isoplot, bird's-eye, etc)?

Matthew Conte, DD's former optical designer now marketing his own line of bicycle lights, might be able to, but probaby is not allowed to.
https://forums.mtbr.com/lights-nigh...l-series-discussion-1055278.html#post13383075
(As a matter of style, I personally would only like round or ovaloid lamps, like Comet FF 200 halogens,
https://catalog.hella.com/catalog/product/view/id/32135/s/1F4 007 893-921/
on a Mini, but it is not an engineering-related choice.)

 

[M_Conte]

Will Diode Dynamics cough up dependable beam data (isoplot, bird's-eye, etc)?

Why, yes! There are isolux diagrams for your viewing pleasure in page 2 of this PDF document:

http://images.diodedynamics.com/doc...Stage_Series_3in_Worklight_Pod_Info_Guide.pdf

Also, about fog lamps being "J583 compliant": you really want to check which category they're certified as. If it's F, that's a truly antique standard that allows pathetic performance and excessive upward stray light. The F3 category is many decades newer and requires much better performance and much less upward stray light. It's not as simple as "F means bad and F3 means good", because there have been some good F-class fog lamps over the years, most of them before F3 existed. But if someone's going to the trouble of designing, tooling, and producing fog lamps in this day and age (in the last 12 years or so), and they put out an F lamp rather than an F3 lamp, that's a pretty clear signal or sign that they didn't know, didn't care, or didn't bother.

The SS3 Sport is designed and verified to exceed the ECE/SAE F3 standard. The SS3 Pro is only SAE F compliant, but I don't think that's a terrible loss. The Pro mainly loses out on F3 compliance due to its enormously powerful emitters and slightly exceeded foreground maxima.

 

[jeffsf]

Alas, there's still only one data point of value on that pull sheet -- the CBCP (or, more properly, CBCD). With no dimensions, what I had always assumed were "artist's conceptions" of the beam pattern aren't useful. Not to mention that 0.1 lux is about as bright as moonlight and I don't make a practice of driving down roads by moonlight alone. Even 1 lux is marginal when you've got the foreground illumination at a couple orders of magnitude higher to contend with.

There are examples of meaningful, isolux diagrams at, for example, https://dastern.torque.net/Photometry/575.html

Hella generally provides birds-eye projections of the data, effectively the lower half only, for their products, such as seen in https://www.hella.com/offroad/assets/media_global/LED_AuxiliaryLights_HELLA_EN.pdf

There are some inconsistencies as well with the marketing claims of "LED Emitter: Luxeon Z ES" and "2,262" "Raw Output (Lumens)" for the Sport series, combined with the specs of the emitters themselves. https://www.lumileds.com/uploads/542/DS134-luxeon-z-es-datasheet-pdf shows that the nominal bin for the highest-output emitters in the series, LXZ2-577T (5700°K) or LXZ2-657T (6500°K) is 250 lm (260 lm nom.) at 700 mA. Fully driven (while fully cooled) they will produce 1.9x the 700 mA level. The use of four emitters was confirmed with the photographs on the Tacoma site. There, as well, the Sports are said to run hot, with the Pros reported to be so hot to handle as to require gloves. The luminosity needs to be downrated by 10-15% or more at high junction temperatures. The absolute maximum ratings table indicates that the drive current also needs to be reduced at higher junction temperatures, so getting anywhere near 1.9x is unlikely with a hot device, perhaps more like 1.3-1.4x at 135°C Tj (limit is 150°C). Hitting over 565 lm per emitter in a hot device seems like a far stretch, even with the top-binned flux parts ("W" is 300 lm). No idea how twice that is obtainable with four Luxeon Z ES emitters (Pro series claims 5,796 raw lumens).

---

On the "if you get stopped" comment, between self-selection among those considering entering highway-patrol / traffic-enforcement roles and how easily and commonly "traffic tickets" are used to enhance local and regional budgets, I wish that were the case here in the US. Regrettably, a light bar looks suspect even at distances where the beams have long faded well below the levels of reasonable observers, human or calibrated.

That said, I've got a Hella 350 Driving on order now to try out. A little 3M VHB tape might be enough to be able to temporarily try them out on the rural highway (two-lane) that I typically drive. If that "test drive" works out, then I can machine a more-proper mounting bar that connects the brackets I have that mount to the bumper mounts on the frame. Unfortunately the Mini doesn't have a stable license-plate area, so mounting options that are safe from poor parkers are limited.

 

[Alaric Darconville]

The Pro mainly loses out on F3 compliance due to its enormously powerful emitters and slightly exceeded foreground maxima.

Basically, it's not compliant *because it's not compliant*. Exceeding maxima is not a virtue.

 

[-Virgil-]

There are isolux diagrams for your viewing pleasure in page 2 of this PDF document

Great, sort of! But actual isolux diagrams are calibrated in illuminance, distance and width.

(Also, there is no such thing as "3000K yellow". 3000K is white, not yellow.)

The Pro mainly loses out on F3 compliance due to its enormously powerful emitters and slightly exceeded foreground maxima.

Let's unpack this. Here are the far-below-horizontal requirements and their intensity limits:

F:
3 Down, 15 Left and 15 Right: No maximum

F3:
2.5 Down, 10 Left to 10 Right: No maximum

6 Down, 10 Left to 10 Right: Not more than 0.5x the intensity measured at 2.5 Down, 10 Left to 10 Right

So you're saying the SS3 Pro fails F3 because its intensity at 2.5 Down is more than half the intensity at 6 Down?
("enormously powerful emitters" is nice, but it's not a realistic explanation for failing F3)

What's the cutoff gradient? How does the SS3 Pro do on the test lines and points at 1 Up, 2 Up, 4 Up, 8 Up, 20 Up, 30 Up, 40 Up, and 60 Up?

(Mr. Conte, I assume you are speaking from a position of first-hand authority when you describe the technical aspects of those Diode Dynamics lamps. Welcome to the board. We're a tough crowd, but a fair one: the kinds of sales pitches that work on the general public tend to raise red flags here because very often the products are lacking. But we don't "hunt for sport" here -- we just seek good data and reasonable, plausible answers to technical questions.)

 

[Alaric Darconville]

Also, M_conte, now would be a good time to disclose any relationship you have with Diode Dynamics.

 

[jeffsf]

In a response on the Tacoma boards, the Diode Dynamics "Vendor" account responded indicating that

They are fully SAE compliant. It says it on the product pages, on the product itself, on the packaging... it is made clear. If you think we emphasized the beam pattern part of that in our marketing, I guess that's because most people care about that part, not the impact and UV testing. But all tests were completed to the relevant standards, and they are compliant lighting devices.

​

The OP of the thread stated that the Pro series uses Cree emitters, which makes the higher output plausible.

We'll see if they ever publish a full or birds-eye isolux.

I can't speak for M_Conte, but perhaps of general interest is a public presentation given by Matthew Conte describing some of the thinking behind an older design of Diode Dynamics.

@Marcturus linked some other work of Matthew Conte in an earlier post in this thread.

 

[MConte05]

Hello! It was brought to my attention that someone made an account trying to use my name to post on Diode's behalf. I am the "real" Matthew Conte, a design engineer who used to work for Diode and actually did some of the early design work on the SS3 stuff. However the user "M_Conte" is NOT me.

I left the company two years ago to start my own lighting company; Outbound Lighting, focusing on bicycle lights. I've always had a CPF account from years ago to lurk, but very concerned as to who is trying to post using my name pretending that I still work for Diode. I've already contacted the admin asking to either provide a contact email address or an IP address to figure out who this person is.

 

[-Virgil-]

The OP of the thread stated that the Pro series uses Cree emitters, which makes the higher output plausible.

The brand name doesn't automatically mean they're high-output emitters, number one. Number two, high-output emitters isn't a plausible explanation for failing SAE F3-class photometric requirements.

 

[-Virgil-]

Hello! It was brought to my attention that someone made an account trying to use my name to post on Diode's behalf. I am the "real" Matthew Conte, a design engineer who used to work for Diode and actually did some of the early design work on the SS3 stuff. However the user "M_Conte" is NOT me.

Oh, boy. So we have some fanboy posing as you. Great! Thanks for speaking up about it, and I happen to be a fan of your bicycle lighting work.

 

[Marcturus]

Wow. I never expected to provoke any such sort of undeclared fanboyism. Glad it's easy to sort out because '05 is the older account. My apologies for any inconveniences caused to Matt Conte!

 

[MConte05]

Yea, believe me, it's weird for me too.

While I did some of the early design work for the SS3 and the optical stuff. Apparently the optical design changed enough from when I left to whoever took on the new design, that I can't provide any insight. Nor have I gotten my hands on the final products. I started design on these things back in 2016-2017 so it was amazing to actually see it finally release. :laughing:

Also, I don't know if updated isolux patterns will ever be provided, but the ones that were in the original marketing material for the SS bars were rough plots that I provided the marketing team based on candella and angle calculations, and they just copied what Rigid Industries was doing for the isolux plots in photoshop. I was never able to get OPTIS to give me a clean birds eye output. I now exclusively use Lucidshape for all my bike light designs and client projects since I grew to hate Optis. Diode does have a Goniophotometer that does give isolux readouts and plots, I believe the only one that has been publically released was the SL1 testing for the F-150 headlight.

 

[MConte05]

Wow. I never expected to provoke any such sort of undeclared fanboyism. Glad it's easy to sort out because '05 is the older account. My apologies for any inconveniences caused to Matt Conte!

No worries! The forum admin let me know the address is coming from the University of Florida, and someone with *personal info removed* address.... which is.... kind of weird. Might be a crazy coincidence?

Hopefully they can speak up and let me know if it's an odd concidence, or maybe we'll never hear from them again.

FYI I did most of the early design work, and have a patent pending for the overall form factor of the SS3, but a lot of the optical stuff I did early on was done nearly 3 years ago with OPTIS. I know things changed between when I left and when the product released, so I can't speak with any authority on the actual current performance, nor have I gotten my hands on the SS3 to see how it ended up. I haven't had any affiliation with Diode since I left in 2018, and focus all my efforts on my business and client projects which I use Lucidshape for.

Can say that Diode does indeed have an in-house goniophotometer, but the isolux plots in the marketing material are just rough outlines that I had given the marketing team for the SS lightbars based on candela plots since OPTIS did a crap job trying to provide birds eye isolux graphs. They then just copied what Rigid Industries does for their isoluxs in photoshop, so I wouldn't take the marketing material to mean anything substainial. I have no idea if they will ever release the actual isolux data, nor would I expect them to.

 

[Greta]

Closing this thread now as it seems it has gone QUITE astray. And subsequent discussion between the real member and the imposter needs to be taken off this board.