HELLA HCS lamps, electronic control and flasher units are designed to the latest ISO International Standard to provide compatibility with commercial vehicle indicator failure systems.
Vehicles driven on public roads require the operation of direction indicator lamps to be monitored and a fault instantly signalled to the driver. Direction indicator lamps are an important road safety feature, signalling the direction change of the vehicle. Failure to signal or failure to recognise a direction indicator signal poses a significant risk of causing an accident.
LED direction indicator lamps offer a reliable Fit and Forget solution and have become the choice for cost conscious transport operators. LED lamps with their low power consumption and Multivolt™ features, are often a challenge for existing lamp failure detection systems on modern trucks and buses.
Transport fleets often feature a mix of trailers equipped with bulb based lamps as well as trailers with full LED based lighting solutions. For the efficient operation of the fleet, each of these trailers should be compatible with the indicator failure detection systems of any of the trucks in the fleet, both now and in the future.
Some manufacturers recommend fitting additional resistive loads in parallel to the LED lamps, to simulate the 21 watts consumed by a traditional bulb lamp.
Such pure resistive load solutions can be problematic for the following reasons:
> They mask the possible failure of the actual LED signal lamp itself.
> In many cases such pure resistive solutions do not function as they provide a linear time/current response which is significantly different to the time/current response of a bulb filament when it heats up, as in the initial heat-up period the bulbs consume significantly more power than the rated 21 Watt.
> Additional parallel resistors consume a significant amount of energy and thus negate the lower power advantage that LED lamps offer.
> LED lamps marked with the HCS symbol feature patented indicator failure control technology which allows seamless communication with HELLA HCS control flasher units, or modern European trucks with body controllers compliant with the ISO 13207-1 standard.
International Organisation for Standardisation
The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) is a network of national standards bodies working together to develop International Standards. Currently ISO has members from 162 countries and 3,368 technical bodies working to a common goal of making international trade and industry more effective and efficient. The standards operate by global consensus, with many governments adopting the standards into their legislation.
ISO 13207-1 Standard
ISO 13207-1 specifies a precisely timed pulse for a low power LED lamp, which momentarily mimics the power consumption of a conventional incandescent bulb. This pulse is suppressed when the LED direction indicator diagnoses itself as faulty. An ISO 13207-1 compatible flasher or vehicle body controller interprets the pulse suppression and alerts the driver to a faulty lamp or faulty wiring.
Body Control Modules or HCS flasher units together with LED lamps designed to ISO 13207-1 maintain the benefit of low power LED lamps, as opposed to a parallel resistor which increases the power consumption to that of a 21 watt bulb.
HELLA New Zealand has been instrumental in laying the groundwork for the development of the HELLA Compatibility System (HCS), which became the blueprint for the new ISO 13207-1 standard. HELLA HCS lamps are fully compliant with ISO 13207-1.
ISO 13207-1 has been agreed to by European truck manufacturers and will be incorporated into the vehicle monitoring electronics of European trucks. Astute transport fleet operators are already future-proofing their trailers by specifying HELLA HCS Fit and Forget LED lighting solutions which will be plug-and-play with the 24 volt European trucks of tomorrow.
To view HELLA lamps featuring HCS technology, please filter for HCS under the Marker & Signal Lamp section. To view HCS Flasher Units, please click here.
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