How to upgrade to LED cabin lights ?

[milest]

OPIE,

Those are high power leds 0.5,1,3,5 watts( I used 1 watt) ,even more powerful ones are available.They placed on aluminium plate called PCB for 1-3-6-8.....there are many types round,square,line.. Each powerled is drived by 3.0-3.5 volts and max current is [email protected] Volts,for 1 watt powerled the light is about 90-110 lumens.But if you don't push hard 3.0 volts they take about 125 mA, 3.2 volts 225 mA.They need led drivers to turn on.Also cooler plates for driver units.Yes my 3 powerled spot is 3.1X3=9.3 Volts. I dropped 12 V to 9.3 (more powerleds you use, less heat for the driver) Even I use deck light 4 units of 1 Watt in serial with no drivers

[opie]

Here is the video I promised of my LED light addition. Really adds a lot to our enjoyment of the boat. We can play cards or do light reading with just the lights shown below. I have LED spot lights above the table and stove that are not on during this video.

LED video

[Doug W]

Thank you all! I followed your suggestions and have replaced the two primary light fixture incandescent bulbs with the warm white LED boards. WOW! I really like them and they are cool to the touch which will really help cabin temperature in the hot humid dog days of summer! Thanks for pointing us at these!


Left, original factory lighting. Middle shows LED with original bulb. Right, new cool and low power LED lighting!

... Doug
http://starsloop.blogspot.com/2010/04/c ... ctica.html

[Love MACs]

Hey Doug where did you get your LEDs ? They really look nice. I order four from a China trading company. Not one of them worked! But did get refund for bulbs and shipping. I like the plug and play/use idea of your lights rather than trying to mess with wiring.

Allan

[Doug W]

I got them at www.superbrightlights.com. They were not cheap ($21 each) which is why I only got two of them. They look great! Warm coloring and bright!

[Duane Dunn, Allegro]

Same bulbs many of us have posted about earlier in this thread. I have four in my boat. Great brightness and great color, not harsh white like many LED's.

1156-PCB-WWHP9, $21.95 each



They simply plug into the standard bayonet base like changing a bulb. I then put a layer of insulating material on the back of the PCB board and just cable tied them to the base. Once in, the plastic lens from the light just snaps back on. Each took a couple minutes to install.

[Russ]

Hey Doug where did you get your LEDs ? They really look nice. I order four from a China trading company. Not one of them worked! But did get refund for bulbs and shipping. I like the plug and play/use idea of your lights rather than trying to mess with wiring.

Allan

Did you try reversing the polarity? LEDs often require correct polarity. Maybe your fixtures are wired wrong?


--Russ

[Love MACs]

Russ could you explain about reversing polarity??? I have heard others mention the need to do that in several cases but really don't understand what that means

Fixtures are wired correct as they work with the standard bulb that came with the boat.

Allan

[Russ]

Russ could you explain about reversing polarity??? I have heard others mention the need to do that in several cases but really don't understand what that means

Fixtures are wired correct as they work with the standard bulb that came with the boat.

Allan

LEDs allow current to flow in only one direction. That's what diodes do.

Typically the center lead on a bulb is positive (+) and must be wired to the positive lead of your battery for an LED to work. Standard bulbs don't care which direction the electricity flows, so it's possible the factory didn't pay attention to the polarity (positive/negative) leads and wired them backwards. They would work fine and nobody would know the difference until a polarity sensitive electronic device like and LED was used.

I've heard other people having to reverse the wires in their fixtures to make LEDs work. It's not that hard to do once you remove the fixture to cut and re-crimp the wires the other way.

Before you do that, you might try an experiment. Most 12v LEDs are voltage forgiving so unless you have another 12v power source, get a 9v battery. Try touching the center lead of the LED to the (+) side of the 9v battery and the case to the (-) terminal. If the bulb lights, you know it's okay and the boat has reversed wires on the fixture and how to fix it.

You may also try another fixture in the boat. The factory installer has a 50/50 chance of getting it right/or wrong. So maybe another fixture has the correct polarity.

--Russ

[Love MACs]

The bulbs I have do not work in any of the fixtures. I am so OCD I tried all four bulbs in all four fixtures I also tried reversing the wires within each fixture, thinking that was what was meant by changing polarity. To do that I simply pulled the crimps loose from each wire and then reattached them to the opposite terminal. But that didn't help either. I have a 9v in a big flashlight and will test the bulbs next I get to the boat. Thanks.


Allan

[Russ]

The bulbs I have do not work in any of the fixtures. I am so OCD I tried all four bulbs in all four fixtures I also tried reversing the wires within each fixture, thinking that was what was meant by changing polarity. To do that I simply pulled the crimps loose from each wire and then reattached them to the opposite terminal. But that didn't help either. I have a 9v in a big flashlight and will test the bulbs next I get to the boat. Thanks.


Allan

Well, based on what you said, the LEDs are probably defective. The 9v batt trick was to avoid doing the heavy lifting of switching wires and fixtures.

It's strange though that they would all be bad, but the Chinese do make cheap stuff. I actually bought a bunch of LEDs direct from China. It took 4 weeks to get here, but they were $2 each and they all work well. I put one in my steaming light and used the reverse polarity trick to power the anchor light as well. By switching the polarity I can toggle between anchor and steaming light with the original 2 wires.

Love those LEDs. I probably use 1/10th the power and the LED nav lights are very bright.

--Russ

[Boblee]

Our boat is wired with white to frame of lights and black negative to centre contact so yes ours was wired wrong but as someone else mentioned some do work in reverse as ours do similar to Duanes, they have a bit of other circuitry there so supposedly they will work both ways.

[Doug W]

Love those LEDs. I probably use 1/10th the power and the LED nav lights are very bright.

--Russ

I want to get LEDs for the nav lights too! At least for the anchor light!

In the meantime, I have a cheap $4 walmart-special solar powered LED garden light to slip into a fishing rod holder whilst at anchor!

Doug

[opie]

It may be of interest to those that like to tinker with stuff that working with random LEDs in a do-it-yourself manner is not as hard as it may seem. There are wonderful LED lighting products out there and they are getting cheaper all the time. But if you would like to play around with bargain LEDs or LED lights that are found in flashlights or holiday lights, etc, here are some tips below. Some comments:

- Most flashlight LED lights or portable LED lights will need to have wires soldered onto them. If you are not comfortable with solder then those lights will not be useful to you. Same thing goes with LEDs that are part of circuit boards or electronic devices. You will need to unsolder and resolder wires. I salvage all sorts of LEDs by soldering. I have a flashlight 9-LED module as my cabin lights in two places.

- individual LEDs will need resistors to work without burning up due to high amps. But, strings of LEDs usually drop enough voltage over themselves that they do not need resistors to work. That is what I found when I bought a long string of LED icicle holiday lights from Ace hardware in January for $5. 150 LEDs altogether for that low price. A real bargain if you can take them apart as I mention below. The funny thing with that string of icicle lights was that there was no transformer or resistor in the entire string. Those smart engineers who designed it used the dropping-voltage characteristic of the many LEDs to exactly limit the amps to the correct level without needing dropping resistors or transformers. When I evaluated the LEDs in groups and indivdually, there were several types of LEDs in the package. Some dropped more voltage than others and some needed resistors to work on my bench and some self-limited the current to 14 ma.

- I will leave out all the LED theory. That is found all over the net. And although I am a electrical engineer by education and trade, I do not use a calculator to figure out circuits and resistor values when doing stuff like this. I find it is better to test stuff with a meter. And in that way the do-it-yourselfer can enjoy the game without going back to school to learn electronics.

Here is my suggested method of figuring out LEDs to use on your boat. After you figure out certain LEDs or strings of LEDs or flashlight LEDs, then you can use the same method below to hook up combinations of your findings in series or parallel to make the best lights for you. For example, I used two of the 9-LED flashlight modules in parallel and put them inside a glass candy jar lid and epoxied the bottom to make my mast-top anchor light. The 9-LEds were in parallel and with the 3 AAA batteries as originally packaged it drew 85 ma (about 9 ma per LED because they are in parallel.) When you have parallel LEDs in your original device, the milliamps add together to form a larger total. When LEDs are in series, all LEDs receive the same milliamp value. That fact takes some thinking and looking closely at the LED wiriing.

- Well, I think I have already exceeded the complexity of discussion that I intended to be for new do-it-yourselfers only. Sorry. I'll leave the rest for comments or contributions to this thread. (Notes: Meter is $3.99 from Harbor Freight, potentiometer is $3 from Radio Shack, 12v source can by your boat battery or other type of 12vdc adapter. I find working in the house on testing circuits to be easier than in the boat.)



LED with resistor

[Russ]

I want to get LEDs for the nav lights too! At least for the anchor light!

In the meantime, I have a cheap $4 walmart-special solar powered LED garden light to slip into a fishing rod holder whilst at anchor!

Doug

I considered the solar LEDs from Wal-Mart. At only $5 bucks it was tempting, but I'm fairly sure they are not bright enough to be legal (2 mile visibility). I'm sure they work fine, but some slitherly lawyer would use that as a way to bust you in court.

I used to have something like this and I replace the bulb with a flashlight LED. It worked great.

This year I went with a mast mounted LED deal that I got on eBay. The lack of anchor light from the factory indicates either Roger's cheapness or belief that these boats should be day sailors only.