Thanks gang.
In testing the eye lights, man are they BRIGHT!! I will have to find a way to dim them. Not as easy as you might think with LED's I hear. I'm a basic positive and negative man, so my electronics guy will sort that out for me hopefully.
Yes COB's can be fiddly to dim.
Best approach is some kind of PR (pulse reduction), as just "lowering the voltage" works acceptable with normal stand-alone leds, but on COB's, it's more something like "too bright, too bright, still too bright, crap can't see them at all now" kind of diming profile.
Reason is the array of individual leds on the COB chip do not act identical, which is why it's very easy to dim a single led in a circuit using a variable resistor, but this won't work all that well using multiple leds.
Still he can try to do a resistor approach first, who knows. Depending on the used COB, you _may_ get away with it still.
LED's in cars are COB's too (basically a bunch of sepperate LED's on one chip carrier, mimmicing "one giant bright led" as you well know) and dimming there is also done using PR (basically you're switching the led's on and off at a certain frequency, the slower you do it, the lower the emmited light level).
It's not that difficult, I'm sure your tech guy will solve it. In case he needs tips, I'm here.
A nice starting point for what he'll need is something like this
http://www.reuk.co.uk/LED-Dimmer-Circuit.htm
But if you need a quick fix and you're not looking for an adjustable dimming level and you're just looking for a way to tone it down, you could use a colored filter over the COB. Keep in mind though, COB's tend to run pretty hot after a while so keep that in mind if you're playing with the idea of using a dimming color filter.
And yeah, I see why you want to keep them. Looks niiiiiice.
