ring LED recommendation

[WayOutWest]

While optimizing my camera setup I ordered about six different LED ring lights (usually sold for people to put around their car headlights, for "bling").

Pretty much all of them were the same, except these, which absolutely knocked my socks off:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Q9QGFYO

41dT5ZMBI6L._SX425_.jpg (21.07 KiB) Viewed 3921 times

YOW they are crazy bright! And they have a built-in diffuser too made of some sort of gelatin-like material. The wires take ordinary GND/+12V, although there's an inline inverter that seems to be a buck/boost of some sort, producing a stable+constant +9.08V across the LED terminals.

I previously built this big hideous contraption out of several layers of clear plastic, the diffuser sheets, and three different LED rings. As soon as I got the COB rings I threw that in the trash and just used them instead, with much better results. In particular, the downcam image in my other thread is illuminated directly using one of these and the other two head-mounted cameras just use the incidental illumination it produces! The ring is large enough (80mm) that you don't need a diffuser when the camera is less than 40mm from the subject.

[dmwahl]

How did you mount those lights, can you share some photos? From my measurements I can fit about a 50mm diameter ring light before hitting the A axis motor, unless I reduce the max Z height (which wouldn't be the worst thing I guess).

[instrukcion14]

At my video you can see that add LED strip to the bottom side of X axe Al profile. it's cool and have no problem with recognition any shapes on boards and tapes. Maybe good solution for next release of liteplacer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrlfSMWU4mI

[dmwahl]

Does it actually improve the vision functions?

[instrukcion14]

yes of course. It doesn't give you more pixels but there less problems with error can't find circle bcs light is more homogenous.

[dmwahl]

Interesting. I ordered the lights Adam mentioned above ($8 for 2 on Amazon) but will have to keep the LED strip in mind too.

[instrukcion14]

It's good to use both light sources because of shadows. Led strip lighten one point for many directions and by that reduce shadows in holes. There was problem that sticky tape reflect light back into camera and then can't recognize circle problem arose on diferent places in workspace.