Re: Anyone moved to LED Lighting?

[salty@xxxxxxx]

On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:32:33 -0600, gordonb.x7kg6@xxxxxxxxxxx (Gordon
Burditt) wrote:

>>>>A lot of new cars already come equipped with LED tail Lights. They are
>>>>very bright, and if one LED fails, you still have a lot of light. The
>>>
>>>According to state and/or Federal regulations, if you're driving
>>>with a tail light with one burned out LED, do you deserve a ticket,
>>>even if you still have a lot of light?
>>>
>>
>>Probably not. I wouldn't be at all surprised if my tailights far
>>exceed the minimum requirements, so that losing a number of elements
>>would still leave me with more than is required.
>
>This was a legal question, not a technical one.  The laws tend to
>be written to make it easy to write tickets.  I wouldn't be at all
>surprised if there was a maximum of 0 dead lights regardless of
>whether you could get it certified if you simply removed all the
>dead lights.  The history of single incandescent bulbs that die and
>leave you with no light makes it more likely that "driving with a
>dead tail light" is a ticketable offense with 1 dead LED and 99
>working ones.  This more likely comes from the state vehicle code,
>not the DOT which is more aiming its regulations at manufacturers,
>but you're still stuck with both sets of rules.
>
>I seem to recall that there are FAA regulations that you have to
>have at least two independent methods of measuring <something> (I
>forget, this may have been altitude or airspeed) but if you add a
>GPS unit, you now have three methods of measuring <something>.  But
>you can't take off unless *all* of them are working, so adding the
>GPS just added another point of failure.
>
>Assume that a tail light setup was certified to be 25% more than
>sufficiently bright with 100 LEDs.  It is likely to be ticket-worthy
>if there's one dead light.  It may be ticket-worthy if there are
>101 working LEDs and one dead one.  It might be ticket-worthy if
>there are 101 working LEDs and no dead ones and it wasn't re-certified.
>
>I'll ask the same question about boats, which one poster said had
>very strict regulations.  Can you get your setup certified if you
>have a dead light in it (without removing the dead one)?  If you
>got your setup certified with N lights (N is, say, around 100) with
>a 25% margin over minimum lighting intensity, and one of N burns
>out, is that acceptable without re-certification (or fixing the
>dead one)?
>

As with automotive lamps, the specifications for boats do not
stiplulate how many elements are in the fixture or how many are lit.
All that is required to be legal is to have the minimum specified
illumination, and in the case of automobile tailights, there is also a
requirement of the size of surface area exposed. If you have an array
of 100 LED's and 50 are not lit, you  are still legal in both an
automobile and a boat as long as you still meet the minimum
specifications.

If there is a spec of dust on the lens of your tailight will you get a
ticket?

>>Very unlike an
>>incandescent tail light that if it loses one lamp, goes completely
>>dark.
>
>>I'm sure you have noticed that the tail lights on cars vary greatly in
>>size. The DOT specifies a MINIMUM size and brightness.