Looking for super bright seven segment LED

[pdfruth]

This may not be the most ideal forum to post into, but I figured since the MC crowd is always doing stuff with SSD's, you folks might be able to help me.

I've just finished building a motorcycle gear position indicator for my Honda motorcycle. It's based on a PIC16F88. The PIC compares wheel rotation to engine RPM, to derive the gear ratio, and then displays the gear number (1 thru 6) on a SSD.... Anyhow, I digress.

I took the motorcycle out for a spin the other day, with my newly constructed gear position indicator fitted to the bike. It worked great! Except for one little detail.... the seven segment display I'm using (I pulled out of my junk box) is plenty bright in the shade. But when I get into an environment where there is moderate-to-intense direct sun light, I can't see the display. I'm using 200 ohm current limiters, driving the display directly from the PIC, which is running on a 5V supply. I'm afraid to increase the current any more, for fear of destroying the PIC.

My question is... is there a source for an SSD that works well in direct sunlight? Also, I've built a small square enclosure for the red SSD, made of 1/8 in. red-tinted acrylic (see the attached picture), which I now have velcro'd to the side of my motorcycle's instrument cluster. Is it better to use red in this case? Or some other color?

Optimally, I'd like to use an SSD that's at least .8 in. tall, but anything between .5 in. and 1 in. should work.

 

[blueroomelectronics]

Super bright (Red / Orange) should work be "daylight visible". Try Digikey

 

[pdfruth]

I've had a look at Digikey and don't really see what I want.

Doing some googling, I have found some other sources tho.
For example;
**broken link removed**

http://www.lumex.com/product.aspx?id=536

I have a dumb question.
It seems SSD's brighness are rated in a unit of measure, either in ucd or mcd.
What is this? Not having any frame of reference, I'm not sure if what I have now is any more, or less, bright than the ones offered at the sites above. Is a bigger ucd number better or worse? More ucd = brigher? How big a ucd is considered good enough for high ambient light condition applications?

 

[picasm]

Kingbright make a range of 0.8" super-bright red displays (min 8000 and typically 36000 ucd at 10mA)

http://www.kingbright.com/index1.php?lang=English

May be best to keep the display size to no more than 0.8 inch as you are powering them from 5v.
(they use two leds in series for 1 inch displays and bigger which means a forward voltage of 4-5 volts would be needed)

 

[Pommie]

If you can find displays that have 3 or 4 LEDs per segment then I would think these would be best suited to your needs. You can use CA displays and connect them directly to 12V and use the pic to switch the low side. Segments that require 6V @ 20mA will be much brighter than single LED ones.

Mike.

 

[pdfruth]

Thought I'd close the loop, and post a followup.

I did get some super bright red LED's from Kingbright (thanks to picasm for the lead).

**broken link removed**

They work very well in bright sunlight conditions.
Thanks all for the help.