Hacker News Reader

Comment by BuildTheRobots | Hacker News Reader

Super-Bright headlights are a massive problem - especially as nearly everyone has their lights adjusted wrong (too high).

Seeing as we're talking about lights on vehicles though, why in the world isn't the use of PWM dimming on a vehicle illegal?

The first thing you teach kids when programming arduinos is to dim an LED using PWM and then move the LED through space; oh look, it's not a dim light, it's a strobing light!

Why in the world it's acceptable to put a strobe light onto a vehicle which by definition moves though space, is entirely beyond me. If you're stuck either behind, or worse, watching one go laterally in your peripheral then it's massively distracting :(

View on HN

PWM is fine. Just needs to be fast enough.

Yep, usually if you are above 3 kHz or so you are good! Unfortunately, a lot of today's LEDs PWM just outside the frequency we could detect flicker without moving, around 100-200 Hz. IEEE 1789 has something to say about this.

I don't think 3khz is enough. Say you can scan your eyes 180deg in 0.1s, and at 3m distance you can discern 1mm features.

If it's 8bit PWM at lowest output (1/256 on-rate) you need about 3(m) x 3.14(pi) / 0.1(s) / 0.001(m) x 256 so you don't see gaps between dots, 24mhz PWM. That does seem high...

You're right that it's probably still detectable. But IEEE considers ~3+ kHz as "no risk." My interpretation is that it could be annoying but unlikely to cause an accident, etc.

Some of the really good LED dimming solutions I've seen that employ PWM are in the 30+ kHz range.

Of course, constant current dimming is the best, but it tends to be expensive.

Dimming by reducing current in LEDs instead of PWM can be very non-linear with respect to light output, brightness can vary significantly between LEDs being given the same current (as is typical in a headlamp, with at least 4-8 individual LEDs being driven by a single driver), and temperature dependent, plus it can cause significant color shift. Long story short, reducing current for dimming groups of LEDs is largely non-practical.

Constant current dimming is used widely for mid-power LEDs in architectural applications. Usually there is a significant number of LEDs, in the 10s or 100s, such that individual variations would average out over the series. You have some color shift, usually toward greenish hues, but this is generally not a consideration.

It might be more of a problem in automotive applications, where for a headlight you use only a few high-power LEDs.

May still be less expensive if it reduces driver's weariness on the road by a few percent.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com