Lexus IS Forum banner

Retrofit Headlights (With addressable strips)

7K views 12 replies 10 participants last post by  lexzila 
#1 · (Edited)
After modding my cluster and center console lights with addressable rgb strips and seeing how that turned out, I figured the next lighting project would be my headlights.

I just finished them.

My goals for this retrofit were:
Cheap(Not a good goal, I know)
Blacked out shroud
Yellow drl/brights bowl(Not a single one of you might like this but I love it:smile2:)
jdm style blinkers(kinda)
and of course, addressable leds(rings, blinkers, and demon eyes>:)

While I was at the junk yard a couple months ago, I ran into a tsx with some smash headlights so I parted out the projectors for 30$.
Everything else came from either amazon, eBay, or aliexpress.

I will try not to present this as steps but as pictures from start to finish. I don't have many pictures though:frown2:


New ebayheadlights compared to my oems.




Baked and taken apart the ebay lights for paint.



Put everything together but not glued to get an idea of how it would look.



Working on demon eyes. I have it controlled that it will turn on at night/dark and off at day.



Left:Oem housing with oem bulb from 2001. Right: Tsx projector with some cheap 6000k d2s bulbs.



Testing out blinker sequence.



Testing out lock/unlock sequence. When the car is off and you lock or unlock the car, you will get a rainbow effect.



This is the control box which will be stored away right under the driver side foot panel. The relays tell the trinket(Little micro controller in the upper right) when to do blinkers, drl lights, demon eye, etc.



Not the best pic of the finish lights, but I will try to get some this weekend.



unlock sequence.



locking with hid turning off.

I will try to get better photos and videos this weekend. I will also be adding more effects to the lights.
Also wanted to add that I honestly hate black/dark headlights on a black car but soon I will be wrapping my car.
I understand that this might not be every ones style but I look forward to the feedback.

This post will also be on HIDPlanet incase you see it there aswell.
 
See less See more
4 8
#2 ·
Ah yeah I remember your interior lights, and still think that's impressive. Pretty neat you were able to carry that to the head lights, and possibly other areas. I still have no idea how this stuff works, but that's some nice work! The red demon eyes are on 24/7 in the dark? I wanted to do that too, but my battery is not strong enough, I don't trust it. Any details about those halo rings? Those plastic things seem to fit very well
 
#3 ·
The red demon eyes are on 24/7 in the dark? I wanted to do that too, but my battery is not strong enough, I don't trust it. Any details about those halo rings? Those plastic things seem to fit very well
The basic run down of the setup is the the lights and relays are connected to the micro-controller(Trinket). You can code a trinket to do many things but I tend to use them mainly for lights. An example of the code if say you had you left blinker on would be

if ignition is on & left blinker relay is on
tell left ring & left blinker to do blinker sequence

Hope that made some sense.

The demons are 24/7 whenever its dark. Once sunlight or any light shines into the cabin, it turns off. I did some quick math with the power draw from the demon eyes and estimated it could go a week straight without killing my battery. I haven't tested this yet though.

The ring covers are from superbrightleds. I got 140mm for the lowbeam side and 120mm for the drl/ brights side. They were a close fit but I had to use a heat gun to get them perfect.

The leds that went into the ring are side-emitting leds which was the hardest thing to find but I found them on aliexpress and had them express ship to me.


Thanks for the feedback and also love your is build thread and retrofits. Amazing work!
 
#8 ·
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top