Hi folks,
Don't have much electronics experience and have forgotten most of what I learnt at school (well it was 25 years ago!) and am hoping I can find some assistance in getting an LED lamp for my motorbike working correctly....
There is an aftermarket lamp made by Clear Alternatives that functions correctly but has a very poorly designed LED board as far as vision is concerned (very narrow beam and mis-aligned LEDs as well as poorly made lamp body).
I've made my own LED board and have found lots of resources on the web to tell me what resistors to use with the LEDs to make the lamp function correctly with the 14.4V my motorbike supplies the lamp. My problem has arisen due to the fact that my BMW motorbike has a CanBus wiring system that has a bulb failure warning circuit. To get round this the aftermarket lamp has a load resistor across each of the running and brake circuits - fooling the onboard system into thinking there's a standard 5/21W tungsten bulb fitted.
When connected, my lamp functions correctly with lower level running light and full level brake light and looks great. I guessed on the 100 ohms for the running light but it looks about the same as the 5W tungsten to my eyes.
If I take one of the aftermarket board load resistors and connect it across the brake circuit, the lamp still functions correctly and it fools the warning system. However when I connect a 2nd load resistor across the running light circuit the LEDs all go out!! I presume that as the LEDs are already dim on the running light circuit, that they get too little current when the load resistor is insterted and so go out.
What I need to know is what load resistors to use, and if necessary what resistors to change on the actual lamp board so they can all work together.
Even better, if someone were actually able to explain to me how it's worked out, I can learn something for the future too!
Here are the diagrams of the aftermarket lamp that works and my new home built one for reference.
Can anyone help me with the above or point me at any reference material, online forums / guides on this that can help?
You'll make a very frustrated man happy!!
Cheers, Lee