I'm currently building a lighting project for my car and have run into difficulties. I will be passing light through an acrylic rod (similar to the DIY "angel eyes" floating round the web, but not exactly the same) but need them to be visible during the daytime. I have 2x5mm 10,000mcd white LED wired in series but these cannot be seen in normal daylight. So far, after extensive searching, I've narrowed it down to:
brighter LED's
cree LED's
I'm thinking of using maybe 2x5mm 55,000mcd white or 2x8mm 100,000mcd LED's - or - 1xcree led? I know very little about cree's, wiring them and powering them so any pointers would be more than welcome. I have some basic soldering skills and am pretty good at picking things up (especially with instructions!!) but need to know how hot any of my ideas/LED combinations will run? the "normal" LED's will be encased in heatshrink to direct the light output forward but I have no idea how to direct the output of a cree if i were to use one?
You're running two ordinary 5mms off a 12V? That'll kill them pretty quickly, if not immediately, unless you have a resistor in there. LEDs in general don't like more than a few volts. That means either a resistor or simply having enough LEDs in series. If you want to get a little more complicated, you could get something like an LM317T from whatever RadioShack's GB equivalent is (Maplin, I think?).
