[fortythirtyfive]

I recently came across a UK company hyping up some new modules for the icon LED headlights, allowing you to colour change the DRL's via a phone app.

Now I get they're a bit gimmicky, but for photoshoots I'd love experiment with them..

As they're not on sale yet the closest thing I've found is the icedriver chips on aliexpress.

Has anyone had these or know of any reviews? I don't want to be using some poorly made parts on my icons, especially after I paid through my teeth to retrofit them

[Billfitz]

Probably illegal in the US, where colored lights are for emergency vehicle use only.

[fortythirtyfive]

Yeah that's one thing I don't want to be messing with, it'll be illegal in most countries however I'm thinking more for show/photo purposes off the road

[aridaen]

I run these on my 335i in Texas in a slow color changing mode. No problems so far with the many police I have seen. The only bad thing is that the range is crap and you have to be right above the controller to change them.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[fortythirtyfive]

Originally Posted by aridaen

I run these on my 335i in Texas in a slow color changing mode. No problems so far with the many police I have seen. The only bad thing is that the range is crap and you have to be right above the controller to change them.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Yeah I went ahead with them in the end - slightly different product as the LED headlights use different chips, but the concept is the same.

[TK335iMSPT]

Originally Posted by fortythirtyfive

Yeah I went ahead with them in the end - slightly different product as the LED headlights use different chips, but the concept is the same.

How was install? any pictures of install process? Any thoughts on the quality compared to oem?

[Hypermile]

More info pls. I was the brightness of the white DRL? Is it a true white or is it to make sure of all colors making it look white ish?

[fortythirtyfive]

Install is a PITA. You have to find a way to route the wires out of the headlight unit.. you’re replacing the existing drl led boards basically. Also if you remove the OEM ones to stick the new ones in place your lights will trip and loose power thanks to the ECU.

I ended up making loom extenders to plug into the OEM board plug, bring it out the headlight and then into an enclosure that had the original boards in. The boards MUST be on a heatsink or they’ll burn out, they get extremely hot and use an aluminium pcb board to help transfer the heat.

Then you have to work out how you’re going to power the external controller (which also powers the new led boards). I built a relay system that only turned on when OEM loom went live, a switched live would leave your DRL’s on for 10 minutes after locking the car.

Brightness isn’t quite as good, remember you’re comparing an RGB chip to 4 white cree smd’s.. that’s 1 red, 1 green and 1 blue smd small enough to all fit in the place of a white one. You can’t use a bigger RGB chip as the DRL’s use light guides so there’s about a 4-5mm opening.

Finally whiteness.. RGB produces a horrible white, it’s very blue/purple. You need a true RGBW chip to reproduce a proper white

[fortythirtyfive]

*for the record I ditched mine, the chips burnt out as they were poor quality and overcharged leds which left me with pink DRLs 😂

I ended up splitting my headlights, removing the light guides and installing addressable RGBW led tape behind each acrylic ring. I have a thread somewhere on here about the build but basically this is the result:

https://youtube.com/shorts/xcqEqFPGcq4

It’s powered by blueghozt and allows me to have custom indicators, startup and shutdown animations

[Onizukachan]

fortythirtyfive I’d never do it but I think it’s really well executed and props are well deserved. Really nice work!

[fortythirtyfive]

Originally Posted by Onizukachan

fortythirtyfive I’d never do it but I think it’s really well executed and props are well deserved. Really nice work!

Yeah personally I'm not really an RGB fan, I'll do it to show what the app can do but it wouldn't be seen doing it off my driveway haha.

The main focus was to be able to have addressable control to the DRL's for this functionality: https://streamable.com/qpzue1 & https://streamable.com/5iognm & https://streamable.com/mhetkg

[Hypermile]

Originally Posted by fortythirtyfive

*for the record I ditched mine, the chips burnt out as they were poor quality and overcharged leds which left me with pink DRLs 😂

I ended up splitting my headlights, removing the light guides and installing addressable RGBW led tape behind each acrylic ring. I have a thread somewhere on here about the build but basically this is the result:

https://youtube.com/shorts/xcqEqFPGcq4

It’s powered by blueghozt and allows me to have custom indicators, startup and shutdown animations

Looks pretty sick! More videos pls.

[MaximusTheGrate]

Originally Posted by fortythirtyfive

Yeah personally I'm not really an RGB fan, I'll do it to show what the app can do but it wouldn't be seen doing it off my driveway haha.

The main focus was to be able to have addressable control to the DRL's for this functionality: https://streamable.com/qpzue1 & https://streamable.com/5iognm & https://streamable.com/mhetkg

I love these!
I want to do the same with mine! I know this is a big ask but could you provide a step by step of how u did this? As much detail as possible😂

[fortythirtyfive]

Originally Posted by MaximusTheGrate

I love these!
I want to do the same with mine! I know this is a big ask but could you provide a step by step of how u did this? As much detail as possible��

You need to literally dismantle and chop up your existing headlights. All of the DRL acrylic rings need to be hacked in half, the holder trays gutted and then strips of addressable leds hand cut and soldered into place.

There's hundreds of different ways to attack this as a project, I kinda just went at it in an experimental sort of way. There's no premade kit that you can plug and play with unfortunately, there's not even anything remotely similar for the icons to keep the oem design; in which you can just modify. I had to literally build them from the ground up which wasn't best for durability.

Your biggest issue will be keeping the oem functionality, you cannot remove the old DRL led boards because unplugging them will flag an error and shutdown your headlight modules. There's also a messy wiring system needed to create a custom switched live which always works when the headlights would normally, otherwise a typical switched live/ignition tap will only go live after you've turned the car on.

Right now I wouldn't recommend replicating this using SK RGBW chips like I did. They're just too dim, especially when you're trying to backlight the pre-existing DRL acrylic shapes. I'm in middle of waiting on some custom UCS chips which have been designed to run as a digital LED even though it's an analog chip, the perk for doing so is the increased mA and higher brightness.

I do believe the new chips will make this a much better success but I'm quite hesitant to posting much of it on here. I had a thread not long ago about a heat soak/headlight module issue which was overheating - I was shot down by several people who couldn't read the opening thread; saying that all of my light modifications had caused something totally separate to overheat the LED modifications run totally separate to the headlight modules, they don't even share the same power as everything is controlled via a custom aftermarket controller, and yet even though I shared a diagram of how these were built people still bashed the thread as "your mods probably did it".

The irony is it's now proven the N55 typically runs too hot for the oem adaptive led icons to be retrofitted without overheating issues. There's insufficient airflow in the areas where BMW mount the headlight modules for LCI on a pre-LCI car, not to mention the B58 running a tad more efficient to keep temps down.

Back on topic however, as a starting ground.. lookup BlueGhozt light module. This is the brains that allows you to configure your led strips, set shutdown/startup animations, control speeds, led counts, indicator preferences plus show modes. Everything else is just power management and LEDs.