Engineering

735 readers

1 users here now

A place to geek out about engineering, fabrication, and design. All disciplines are welcome. Ask questions, share knowledge, show off projects you're proud of, and share interesting things you find.

Rules:

Be kind.
Generally stay on topic.
No homework questions.
No asking for advice on potentially dangerous jobs. Hire a professional. We don't want to be responsible when your deck collapses.

The community icon is ISO 7000-1641.

The current community banner image is from Lee Attwood on Unsplash.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

kersploosh@sh.itjust.works

Does anyone know a way to convert an LED car headlight kit to have variable control? (lemmy.world)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by yokonzo@lemmy.world to c/engineering@sh.itjust.works

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm thinking of just adding a potentiometer to a car headlight kit, this serves two purposes, 1. Allows me to have bright ass lights in place of my shitty Prius lights on long country roads while letting me turn down the brightness to not blind people in front of me. And 2: I think this would be a fun project to learn a little more about electronics and car mods.

So far I think I would just need the light kit and a potentiometer to use as a control interface, and maybe some sort of transistor with a heatsink, and possibly a diode to prevent reverse voltage damage. I'm not sure about the heatsink but I know that LED lights being so efficient use almost all of their energy on light, I'm just not sure what will happen to that energy if throttled, making me think it may possibly come off as heat in the transistor.

What do you all think? Doable?

Edit: consensus seems to be it's not practically feasible, do what I think I'll end up doing is just upgrading my brights specifically so I can have a dumbed down version of the same thing

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Most people just do that thing where you pull the handle to you and your "brights" come on.

Not trying to be a dick, but I've met a few people who grew up in cities and legitimately didn't know "brights" were a thing

But in any case, dont fuck with your headlights, they're an important safety feature.