I have some specific festive porch light strings (like xmas lights) I might want to convert over to LEDs. I have a camper van they'd be fun to use with, like some margaritas, trout, bugs, etc, and since I'm running off the battery it's necessary to keep the power consumption to a minimum. In fact I might make a constant current buck converter off the main power inverter output. I have some ideas of maybe some neat mass displays.
Now one thing which strikes me as problematic is most LEDs are focused packages. This won't produce decent internal illumination inside the decorations, just one bright spot at the end. Bare devices without a decoration around them wouldn't light up right at all.
A frosted LED would be nice, but I need a lot of cheap, easy to find parts. I can buy white T1 or T1-3/4LEDs by the ton from eBay, cheap. Is there a way to modify them for even illumination? I could always grind the domed end off, but that sounds like it's still going to cast mostly forward, a lot wider than before but still nowhere near the optimum 360 deg illumination I need.
I dunno- there are some LED xmas lights for sale already, they're sort of on the expensive side but then 100's of white LEDs are expensive as well even from eBay. Kinda hard to justify building my own. Well, part of it is I'd already need to hack into these holiday strings to do these chili lights and margarita glasses and such and they may not be suitable. Also I need a fairly specific number of lights here (could always put tape over the unused ones if there are too many, though there's still a power issue) and the number and spacing they provide might not be right.
Now one thing which strikes me as problematic is most LEDs are focused packages. This won't produce decent internal illumination inside the decorations, just one bright spot at the end. Bare devices without a decoration around them wouldn't light up right at all.
A frosted LED would be nice, but I need a lot of cheap, easy to find parts. I can buy white T1 or T1-3/4LEDs by the ton from eBay, cheap. Is there a way to modify them for even illumination? I could always grind the domed end off, but that sounds like it's still going to cast mostly forward, a lot wider than before but still nowhere near the optimum 360 deg illumination I need.
I dunno- there are some LED xmas lights for sale already, they're sort of on the expensive side but then 100's of white LEDs are expensive as well even from eBay. Kinda hard to justify building my own. Well, part of it is I'd already need to hack into these holiday strings to do these chili lights and margarita glasses and such and they may not be suitable. Also I need a fairly specific number of lights here (could always put tape over the unused ones if there are too many, though there's still a power issue) and the number and spacing they provide might not be right.
