New Cibie Oscar LEDs!?

[Alaric Darconville]

I find Amazon "reviews" entertaining in the same way as psychodrama-thriller movies: it's fascinating to look inside the heads of some of the people, unhinged from reality or too dumb to breathe and walk at the same time, who write those "reviews".

LOL!

The Dunning-Kruger effect is advantageous to these junk makers-- glowing product reviews by people who don't know any better are then read by people who don't know any better, who then purchase and install the products and then write their own reviews.

 

[-Virgil-]

Not only that, but really stoopid complaints. On the order of "This screwdriver SUCKS, DO NOT BUY IT and I will tell you why: I bought it to pry 400-pound cement blocks off my driveway, but this stupid screwdriver BROKE the first time I used it. Called the maker's customer service line and they had the NERVE to tell me their so-called "warranty" doesn't cover "abuse or misuse". ZERO STARS, DO NOT BUY!"

 

[Marcturus]

When trying to quickly profile a semi-uninformed reviewer's intentions by checking his other reviews, I happen to find Amazon's recent intentional website changes more annoying than the easy-to spot foolish comment. Whether you like it or not, them reviews are important, especially when the overwhelming majority of other sales channels appear to be as lazy,(*) sloppy or unqualified as the stereotypical buyer's review.
If the first, or one of the early reviews is informed, concise, but well-written, it tends to stay on top and get noticed. That's why earlier, I had kindly suggested a more active, but not manipulative, approach by Valeo marketing. But they still seem to think that the internets are some American Minitel.

(*) A quick (and sloppy) web search finds just ONE independent photo of an Oscar LED lit road - and it's not even clear if was the Oscar or the linked Super Oscar!
http://www.jussinmaki.net/blogi/lisavalovertailu-2016-2017/

 

[Alaric Darconville]

Whether you like it or not, them reviews are important

When reading reviews one must certainly separate the wheat from the chaff-- but when many who read the reviews are confused as to what wheat and chaff actually are (a supermajority of the typical person shopping for vehicle lighting), it doesn't matter how informed or even well-written the review is. I see a great many "most helpful" reviews for products that were obviously written by someone who has no business recommending a product.

But we're straying a bit too far from this topic.

(*) A quick (and sloppy) web search finds just ONE independent photo of an Oscar LED lit road - and it's not even clear if was the Oscar or the linked Super Oscar!
http://www.jussinmaki.net/blogi/lisa...ilu-2016-2017/

With a Beam Peak Intensity Reference Number of 17.5, it seems a little low for the Super Oscar LED. And since there's a Mini Oscar LED, an Oscar LED, and Super Oscar LED, it seems that saying "Oscar LED" isn't completely ambiguous. It's not like they'd say "not Super" or something.

 

[John_Galt]

I'll have to figure out the manual settings on my moms camera for beamshots, but until I fo, I'll just give my impressions:

1) I ordered super oscars, with the impression from the literature they were 125k lux apiece. The box packaging states 75,000 lux, the pamphlet inside states 125k lux. Not sure what to believe. (However, if mine are in fact the 75k lux models, I intend to additionally purchase and compare them with the 125k lux super oscars. And now, fo shiz'nGiggles, I am considering the Myotek PAR46 led spots posted about by Virgil here <http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?429573-If-all-you-cared-about-was-distance&p=5047982&viewfull=1#post5047982> just because.)

2) The mount is a single stud, the mount has an integrated tab to prevent the bolt head from turning. The two wings that mount the lamps each have a large allen key head bolt. The mount is fairly solid, I would definitely add some sort of additional brscing if you drive on washboard roads regularly, but for typical paved road driving, I would think just keeping an eye on their tightness would be sufficient.

3) The housing is fairly lightweight. Feels like aluminum, but may be some sort of thermoplastic, as I see no machining marks or burrs. There is a vent at the top, and the pigtail exits the rear of the lamps in between the molded/inset allen bolt nuts. The lens covers snap into 4 molded in slots in the housing.

These blow my highbeams out of the water, for sure. Idk about reaching out and touching 1500' away (again, not sure if I ordered a super oscar model that is, in fact only 75k lux, or the 125k lux model), but they provide a much further reach than my high beams, as well as more overall light in front of the vehicle. There is no real super intense hotspot. Up close on a wall, the beam pattern is two overlapping trapezoids, the central, overlapping portion is definitely more intense, and on th road, translates into a very smooth tunnel of light, putting light on the road, as well as above the horizon. Its a lot of light, and smooth, no intense, distracting hotspot. My aiming is rudimentary, I found a parking lot that was dark, and lit up the side of a building, from about 25 yards. I used my headlamps as a reference, blocked one lamp at a time, and moved up/down/left/right in comparison to my headlamps hotspot, did a test drive up a backroad with a long, relatively straight hill. Repeated the process several times until I was satisfied. They're aimed slightly cross-eyed, to give a little more distance "punch" and help lead into turns as well. They're not a ridiculously wide beam, but the extra light is still helpful on wide curves.

I did just a quick and dirty wiring harness, with just a switch for now. I'll be taking a look st the wiring diagrams for the 3rd gen 4runner (mine's a '99) to see if I can use the fog lamp circuit to trigger a relay to light them up with the highbeams, and cut them with the lowbeams.

Now, these are a very cool white LED. I recently tinted my headlamps to selective yellow, a change that I *really* like. Were I the capable, experience modding type, I would be attempting to swap the two LED's with a more neutral white ones. They appear to be Cree XM-l2's. As it stands, if these are lamps I'll be keeping, I will likely tint the lenses with either the same paint as my headlamps, or with either kaptan tape or theater lighting tint film. Durability shouldnt be a huge issue for the tint, as I intend to keep them covered during the day or when I don't wish to use them. But the color temperature is a personal matter. I want less blue, but blue is popular amongst the mass purchasing public, for better or for worse.

I run phillips 9003 xtreme vision +100bulbs, and at idle, the stock wiring (which utilizes a relay from oem) feeds 14.2v to both headlamps, so I'm getting plenty of light, as is. My '99 4runner is sitting pretty with the aid of an old man emu 3" lift, heavy springs and firm valved shocks. A few months after the lift, I had the vehicle in the shop for a timing belt replacement, and asked them to use a beam setter to aim my headlamps. 18 months of carrying tools and jack and jackstands has caused some settling in the rear (my lift retained the stock forward "rake", now the height from hub to fender is even front and rear), and I have only manually "eye balled" the headlamps aim, so, admittedly, I need to correct that.

 

[Marcturus]

Thanks for your impressions/review.

Couple of thoughts:
One, unfortunately, at $200 apiece, I doubt you somehow received the brighter, wide-beam version. Theoretically, a more likely mix-up would be getting a "warehouse returned" reference 17.5 lamp in 27.5 packaging after a previous customer ordered the 27.5 version, but sent it back for some made-up reason, "erroneously" sneaking in the dimmer version.
But even if the lens states both beam intensity reference numbers, the basic version's 17.5 AND the "wide-beam's" 27.5, the actual version is still supposed to be identifiable via additional data somewhere else on the lamp.

Two, filtering blue-rich light with a selective-yellow colored filter, you proportionally lose more light than filtering a warm-white light source. I haven't been too impressed by my own quick trials, not even on a mixed road surface of snow and wet asphalt where I had expected at least some "subjective" benefit. And if you SY-filter cold white light, the resulting color will be greenish yellow, outside the SY chromatic boundaries (... just in case you care). Without sodium, halogen or true-SY colored lights around to notice the greenish tint stick out, it will still appear yellow, though.


Edit:

"dimmer" used colloquially as synonym of "lower peak intensity", not as overall beam quality rating

Your pamphlet inside couldn't be the black-white & yellow, Oscar LED range generic, 6-page, multi-lingual installation instructions as available from conrad.com's site?? It simply advertizes the whole range as "High Intensity UP TO 125,000 cd" which would not necessarily apply to the accompanied lamp.

PDF file titled "Cibie Additional Headlight Range Catalogue," page 19, showing front markings and wattage data positions
- the reference 17.5 product will show SAE markings
- given similar engineering, the ref 17.5's (700 lm) wattage data will be lower than the ref. 27.5 product's 1200 lm

 

[John_Galt]

<Referencing the tinting> yeah, thats my concern as well. I tinted a cheapo led bar I had on my jeep, and worked out alright though, but there was a notiecable drop in intensity.

I've quite enjoyed the selective yellow tinting for night driving. I have to wind my way up and down hills and lots of twisty hollow roads, that are also littered with lots of road signs (deer warnings, sharp turn signs, signs for hidden intersections, etc) and the drop in reflective intensity from them has been quite noticeable. Less light reflected back at me,less glare when Im trying to see into a curve. We havent had any instances of heavy fog recently, but even just driving in the rain, my headlamps light up noticeably less sprsy coming off the vehicles in front of me.

What markings should I reference on the lamps themselves to differentiate between the 17.5 and 27.5 lamps? That is information I'd be happy to have posted here, if only to help ithers cobsidering these lamps.

 

[-Virgil-]

I ordered super oscars, with the impression from the literature they were 125k lux apiece. The box packaging states 75,000 lux

There's something wrong with these numbers. 75,000 lux would be 46,875,000 candela (nearly 47 million). 125,000 lux would be 78,125,000 candela. (78 million plus a little). Not on this planet! I think you meant to say 75,000 cd and 125,000 cd.

What is the reference number near the "E" mark? That will be a number like 12.5, 17.5, 20, 25, 30...

Other than that, thanks for the hands-on review. Good stuff.

a more likely mix-up would be getting a "warehouse returned" reference 17.5 lamp in 27.5 packaging after a previous customer ordered the 27.5 version, but sent it back for some made-up reason, "erroneously" sneaking in the dimmer version.

Whoah, hold your horses! Assuming your reference numbers are correct, the ref-17.5 lamp is not "dimmer" or weaker or inferior compared to the ref-27.5 lamp. All the reference number tells is the peak (maximum) intensity within the beam. A ref-17.5 lamp would have a peak intensity of about 52,500 cd. A ref-27.5 lamp would have a peak intensity of about 82,500 cd. But these numbers tell us nothing about how the light is distributed in width and height/depth, where or how big the high intensity zone is, what the gradient is between the peak intensity and its surroundings, etc. The only real use for the reference number is its intended purpose: making sure a vehicle in Europe or another country where UN Regulation 48 applies, does not exceed the maximum allowable total peak intensity of 225,000 cd (total up all the reference numbers of all the lamps that can be simultaneously lit, and the total cannot exceed 75).

But even if the lens states both beam intensity reference numbers, the basic version's 17.5 AND the "wide-beam's" 27.5, the actual version is still supposed to be identifiable via additional data somewhere else on the lamp.

Who says? It's a major nuisance that there is no such requirement enforced in the UN Regulations, nor in the US or Japanese regulations. So we get lamps that have multiple different sets of approval and certification markings, and there's no marked indication of which markings apply to the individual lamp you happen to be looking at.

filtering blue-rich light with a selective-yellow colored filter, you proportionally lose more light than filtering a warm-white light source.

That is true. Of course, you have to then ask the attached question: how much of the blocked/filtered light was going to help you? That depends on what conditions you're trying to see in. Blue light's interaction with human seeing systems is complicated.

Selective yellow LEDs are technically feasible to make. I don't hold much hope, but perhaps someday some company will snap their fingers and go "Hey, I know!" when they're looking around for a way to set their lamps apart from the rest. Would serious off-roaders and bad-weather drivers buy very high-performance LED driving lamps that are warm or neutral white? Would they buy very-high-performance LED fog lamps that are selective yellow?

 

[John_Galt]

There's something wrong with these numbers. 75,000 lux would be 46,875,000 candela (nearly 47 million). 125,000 lux would be 78,125,000 candela. (78 million plus a little). Not on this planet! I think you meant to say 75,000 cd and 125,000 cd.

What is the reference number near the "E" mark? That will be a number like 12.5, 17.5, 20, 25, 30...

Other than that, thanks for the hands-on review. Good stuff.

It's pouring down rain right now, so I will get back to you on the reference numbers on the lens.

Not super-sure the difference between candela and lux. Lux is a measure of intensity, as well? (This being a flashlight forum, primarily, I had assumed lux/cd were interchangeable. My mistake. So lux is a reference to total light in a given measurable area, whereas candela is purely a measure of intensity???) The packaging for my lamps does both state 75,000 candela.

Whoah, hold your horses! Assuming your reference numbers are correct, the ref-17.5 lamp is not "dimmer" or weaker or inferior compared to the ref-27.5 lamp. All the reference number tells is the peak (maximum) intensity within the beam. A ref-17.5 lamp would have a peak intensity of about 52,500 cd. A ref-27.5 lamp would have a peak intensity of about 82,500 cd. But these numbers tell us nothing about how the light is distributed in width and height/depth, where or how big the high intensity zone is, what the gradient is between the peak intensity and its surroundings, etc. The only real use for the reference number is its intended purpose: making sure a vehicle in Europe or another country where UN Regulation 48 applies, does not exceed the maximum allowable total peak intensity of 225,000 cd (total up all the reference numbers of all the lamps that can be simultaneously lit, and the total cannot exceed 75).

Is there any manner by which a peak intensity measure, such as the candela given, can be used to determine a theoretical maximum seeing distance? Is candela relatable to lux (for peak intensity???)?

Who says? It's a major nuisance that there is no such requirement enforced in the UN Regulations, nor in the US or Japanese regulations. So we get lamps that have multiple different sets of approval and certification markings, and there's no marked indication of which markings apply to the individual lamp you happen to be looking at.

Why would a manufacturer not mark the applicable approval and certification markings for these lamps? Other than there being a laundry list of countries and an even longer list of standards. So you're saying that SAE/DOT markings are effectively meaningless for determining legality?

That is true. Of course, you have to then ask the attached question: how much of the blocked/filtered light was going to help you? That depends on what conditions you're trying to see in. Blue light's interaction with human seeing systems is complicated.

Selective yellow LEDs are technically feasible to make. I don't hold much hope, but perhaps someday some company will snap their fingers and go "Hey, I know!" when they're looking around for a way to set their lamps apart from the rest. Would serious off-roaders and bad-weather drivers buy very high-performance LED driving lamps that are warm or neutral white? Would they buy very-high-performance LED fog lamps that are selective yellow?

Color temp (and I realize its not just about color temp, but I'm going to use it as a catch-all term) does seem to be something that a lot of the mass manufactured led lighting available seems to be missing out on. I'm not surprised in seeing the mass produced and re-branded cheap chinese bars/pods/lamps utilizing the crappiest binned cold white LEDs (and, often it seems, fake cree/phillips chips).

However, there's really no mid-market lamps/pods/bars. Which I kind of understand, its a market heavily saturated with cheap crap that does illuminate, and most people are trying to spend as little money as possible.

But jump up the market, and, realistically, the bars/pods/lamps offered by the likes of visionx/baja designs/etc are overpriced, imho. They offer bright lamps, sure, and good warranties... But while they do, likely purchase better binned LEDs, they still always all go for extremely cool white. I have yet to see an LED lamp offered that is sub 5000k. And bluer light does interact more with moisture and dust in the air. So there solution is to offer tinted lenses, either snap-on covers, or a tinted lens. When these first started getting marketed/offered/pimped via social media, they did all seem to offer amber lenses, and some offer amber LEDs, rather than white. Of course, amber light is useless for seeing (imo), due to lack of green light (think about how much/many shades of green a typical offroad environment offers. Plus needing to differentiate shades of brown due to road/track/soil differences, I'm sure using a true-amber lamp is annoying and difficult to see with, *other than illuminating less airborne dust.*). So several companies are now referring to yellow tinted lenses/covers, still as Amber.

Which is just annoying. I'm sure its from a marketing department sense, but then again they all miss out on the market opportunity of saying "we offer the first neutral-white LED lamps to provide a full spectrum lighting experience, in addition to less light lost when using our selective yellow filters for high dust/moisture environments."

I heavily tinted my cheapo LED bar, and it did lose a lot of output, but it was a cheapo 60w 12LED 20"bar, so no great loss. It was probably 6500k before, and I put 5 good coats of that duplicolor metal cast anodize yellow on the lens. Probably 1-2 coats would have been sufficient to cut a lot of blue and not drop output as much, but I wanted to see how deep a color the lens would get. My headlamps on my 4runner have only 4 coats, but turned out nicely.

 

[John_Galt]

Marcturus,

Yes, the pamphlet provided was just the multi-lingual mounting instructions and generic descriptions.

It would be nice if they made their reference markings more clear with their model # distinctions.

 

[-Virgil-]

Not super-sure the difference between candela and lux. Lux is a measure of intensity, as well?

Candela: Intensity in a given direction.
Lux: Illuminance. How much light strikes a surface. One lux is one lumen per square meter.

Is there any manner by which a peak intensity measure, such as the candela given, can be used to determine a theoretical maximum seeing distance?

Only if you know where that peak intensity is pointed, or you don't care what direction, you just want to know maximum seeing distance (in any direction) from that lamp. That's usually not what we want, though, because we want to know how far straight ahead, or how far down the right-hand edge of the road, etc.

Is candela relatable to lux

Lux times the squared distance in meters between lamp and target yields candela. So if we measure 17 lux at a particular angular location, 25 meters in front of a lamp, that's 17 * 25 * 25 = 10,625 candela. Or if we know the peak intensity of a lamp is 60,000 candela [and we know the peak intensity is dead-center and the lamp is aimed dead-center] and we want to know the distance at which it will light an object at a level of 3 lux, that's d^2 = 60,000/3, so d^2 = 20,000, take the square root of both sides and you find that distance d = 141.4 meters.

Why would a manufacturer not mark the applicable approval and certification markings for these lamps?

Oh, they do...along with all the other markings that apply to all other versions of that lamp that happen to use the same lens (or whichever other component bears the markings). The regulations don't say a lamp shall bear ONLY the markings relevant to it, though they should. They say the lamp shall BEAR the markings relevant to it, and there's nothing saying markings beyond the required ones are prohibited, though there should be. In past times this wasn't an issue because there was no overlap between a US headlamp, a Japanese-spec headlamp, and a European headlamp. That's no longer the case, but the regulations haven't caught up. It costs money to change out the lens molds and stock/handle multiple differently-marked lenses that are otherwise the same, opens up the likelihood of problems where the wrong lens would be installed on a given lamp, leading to an expensive recall and wasted parts, etc. So therefore...multiple markings.

So you're saying that SAE/DOT markings are effectively meaningless for determining legality?

If you have a headlamp in your hand that bears US markings (SAE/DOT, etc) as well as UN markings and/or JIS markings, it is not possible to use those markings to determine what you are holding in your hand.

Color temp (and I realize its not just about color temp, but I'm going to use it as a catch-all term) does seem to be something that a lot of the mass manufactured led lighting available seems to be missing out on.

Well, I would say they're not missing out on it so much as they're pushing it in one direction only: higher and higher, bluer and bluer.

But jump up the market, and, realistically, the bars/pods/lamps offered by the likes of visionx/baja designs/etc are overpriced, imho. They offer bright lamps, sure, and good warranties... But while they do, likely purchase better binned LEDs, they still always all go for extremely cool white.

They're riding the coat-tails of the OEM marketing on the subject ("closer to natural daylight", etc).

And bluer light does interact more with moisture and dust in the air.

Not at levels relevant to seeing while driving. The actual drawback of blue light is its interaction with the human eye.

So there solution is to offer tinted lenses

A lossy solution at best.

Which is just annoying.

It sure is!

they all miss out on the market opportunity of saying "we offer the first neutral-white LED lamps to provide a full spectrum lighting experience

Oh, geez, for heaven sakes don't say "full spectrum", that opens up another whole big can of worms!

 

[John_Galt]

My Super Oscars are marked 17.5 on the lens. Which makes me want to find a set of the 27.5 models, and compare.

These, again, add a very appreciable amount of light in the mid-field and illuminate much further than my high beams. And, realistically, the extra seeing distance afforded by the higher outout models would likely be wasted, seeing as these already more than illuminate the longest sight line on my typical backroad drive.

I found a link for the FSM for my gen 4runner, I'll have to comb through it and find the wiring diagrams. If I could use the oem fog-lamps relay to trigger these, I'd be set (and likely end up with less of a mess of wiring inder my hood). I should be able tondo this, its what I did to my previous vehicle, a '00 cherokee, smto power my set of cibie 35 series auxiliary high's.

As soon as I remember the password to my ohotobucket account, I'll post pics of them mounted, and try a wall beamshot, and a road shot (which will come down to camera accessibility).

 

[Marcturus]

Apart from the news that Cibie Oscar LEDs have been on sale in Finland at 50 EUR apiece (Mini ), 70 EUR (Oscar), and 80 EUR (Super O, conflicting info on watts/lumens, so probably not the more powerful, 26W, wide beam),
https://issuu.com/motonet/docs/vko40_tabloid_issuu/2
I also noticed two 17W working light cubes at another Finnish shop, supposedly Cibie-branded. Are these genuine? Not unlikely given the unfortunate 6000K CCT...
www.autoluettelo.fi/wls/view_product_list.do?filtered=false&nodeId=n2816200&
www.autoluettelo.fi/Matrix/images/77/6/61-46152 product.jpg

 

[Alaric Darconville]

Copied one, and moved another, (threadsurrection) post to New Cibié LED work lights.