LED lighting

Rob, we have discussed LED lighting before. Since it is not a maintenance item, but a change or conversion, I thought it may fit in the general category. There are many new members on the forum. That is a good thing, but some may be new to boating and missed some of our discussions. With that in mind, here goes LEDs again.

Moonstruck had 40 lights changed. There were all sorts of lights involved. There were as follows:

11 courtesy lights
17 overhead lights
1 hanging locker
2 in the head ( don't want to call them "head lights")
5 reading lamps
3 light bars for decor lights behind the cornices
1 anchor light

The 2 mile visibility certified bulb for my Aqua Signal anchor light was about $50. The decor light bars were about $20 ea. The brighter lights for head were about $15 ea. The total was about $500.00. In my opinon, it was well worth the expense.

It is nice not to worry if someone has left a light on. They use so little electricity that even at anchor there can be good lighting on the boat. It is a fairly easy conversion that I did about 2 years ago. It would probably be even cheaper today.

Be careful about the Kelvin scale on your lights. Somewhere around 2700-3000 is "warm white". This is the more pleasant light that mimics an incandescent bulb. Everybody has the light they want, and I don't worry about it. It is a great conversion.

What lights do you have in your engine room? I want to replace my two basic 12 volt bulbed ones with something that will give me more light.

I've converted all the lights on HIGH COTTON to LEDs. Even the flashlights.

When you spend time on the hook, the energy savings is significant.

The two I installed in the V berth have built in driver circuits. Thes are the good kind that won't brighten or dim with variations in voltage and won't fail if there's a momentary voltage spike.

The bad news is, the drivers caused RF interference on TV channel 7, the local PBS station. The picture would freeze whenever I turned a light on. I had to install filters inside the fixtures to correct the problem.

For the other interior lighting, I went the cheap route with ebay G4 replacement bulbs. They don't have the drivers and some of the individual LEDs have failed. They were supposed to be "warm white", but they are not all the same color temperature. In retrospect, I should have paid more for better quality.

For the hanging locker (I had to do this after seeing a friend's boat where you open the locker door and the light goes on), I bought a 12 volt strip light, a microswitch, and an eight AA cell battery holder from ebay. So the hanging locker light operates off eight AA cells, but there won't be any spike problems, I didn't have to wire it back to the electrical panel, and I expect the batteries to last a very long time in this application.

LED conversion:

Fighterpilot said:

What lights do you have in your engine room? I want to replace my two basic 12 volt bulbed ones with something that will give me more light.

Click to expand...

The engine room has two fixtures. One is 12V one 115V. They are both flourescent. They give good lighting. I did not change them because the are low wattage, and I am the only one to turn them on and off.

There is some good info here about strip lighting if you are interested in accent lighting.
LED STRIP LIGHTING (Ins and outs info)

My boat will use as much LED lighting as possible.

Timely subject

Don,

I've got 4 of these lights in my salon.



I've been looking at the Lumitec Aurora dome light that is white/red dimmable. My concern is the Kelvin scale of of whiteness.

http://lumiteclighting.com/images/productphotos/aurora.gif

I cannot find Kelvin numbers on this unit, but it's since dimmable, maybe that's not a huge issue. The other negative is it's a 4 inch size and the ones I'm replacing are 5 1/2 inches. I can either use use a plate to mount them or buy another model that's red/white dimmable.

I'm also considering this, but it's not dimmable:

http://www.defender.com/product.jsp?path=-1|65136|739053|760437&id=1621318&cartId=3508148

When I took down one mounted on the headliner, I found the top of theplate cracked and deformed with the headliner stuck to it. t melted, I'd hesitate to call it melted, but it was one stage before that point. Obviously this discovery moves the purchase of replacements to the front burner.





Yes, that's headliner stuck to the back. All those rough spots are where the headliner was stuck to it.

Do you have any recommendations for red/white dimmable dome lights? I'll need 4 for the salon and 2 white only for the head.

FlyWright said:

Don,


Do you have any recommendations for red/white dimmable dome lights? I'll need 4 for the salon and 2 white only for the head.

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Al, try this link. I would think you need an 1142 base. I would think they are dimmable, but you had better check it out. You may have to have an LED dimmer, but some work on either.

18 High Power SMD LED BAU15S bulb Specifications

Don,

I was aware of the Kelvin numbers when I bought the lights and stayed in the warm range. We put brighter bulbs over the futon for reading with the (well) over 50 eyes. At the price, see add below from ebay today, I was willing to take the risk of a short lifespan.

The only problem I had was not realizing that the led's are polarity sensitive. Several did not work when installed and it took some swapping of lights that did work before I figured it out.

They were cheap but we are on the third season with no problems. One advantage is that I had too many lights on the same circuit. It would sometimes trip if all the lights were on. Since going to the led's, I have had no problem and avoided having to split the circuit. Our amp draw is way down as well, never worry about leaving the light on.

Just installed the led anchor light and have led running lights but have not installed them yet. I wonder why I bought the running lights since the engine is always going when when I use them. Engine room this summer and stick up battery units for the hanging lockers.

Rob

G4 24 SMD LED Warm White Marine Light Bulb Lamp 12V 1W
Returns: Accepted within 14 days
Buy It Now
$1.00

Datenight said:

Don,



Rob

G4 24 SMD LED Warm White Marine Light Bulb Lamp 12V 1W
Returns: Accepted within 14 days
Buy It Now
$1.00

Click to expand...

Great price. Do you have a link to that supplier?

Big fan of LEDs

I have rebuilt all of my flourecent fixtures with LEDs on Fryedaze. I removed 4, 6 watt incondecent dome lites in the engine roome and replace with 5, 20 inch LED bars. I didnt save any amps in the engine room but there wont be a leak that I dont see. I have an anchor lite that I will repalce the next time I drop the mast. I love what I see so far but only time will tell if the expense was worth it.

Try this site out. The prices are great. I put 4 20 watt quartz in my main cabin( to be repalced with LED bulbs at a later date) They have the red and white combo lites.
Boaterbits

fryedaze said:

Try this site out. The prices are great. I put 4 20 watt quartz in my main cabin( to be repalced with LED bulbs at a later date) They have the red and white combo lites.
Boaterbits

Click to expand...

Thanks for the link, Dave. I think I need sunglasses to look at your ER pic! There's no substitute for lumens!!

Moonstruck said:

Al, try this link. I would think you need an 1142 base. I would think they are dimmable, but you had better check it out. You may have to have an LED dimmer, but some work on either.

18 High Power SMD LED BAU15S bulb Specifications

Click to expand...

Thanks, Don. I'm thinking I should be replacing the entire fixtures in the salon. I especially like the dimming feature which I currently do not have. But those could be good alternatives for the 'head lights'.

I'm also considering multi-color dimmable LED ribbon (or rope) lights for behind the valances.

I'm not looking for the disco look, but might find a use for it if I happen upon it with all these lighting upgrades. Does anyone have a disco ball they're not using?

FlyWright said:

Thanks, Don. I'm thinking I should be replacing the entire fixtures in the salon. I especially like the dimming feature which I currently do not have. But those could be good alternatives for the 'head lights'.

I'm also considering multi-color dimmable LED ribbon (or rope) lights for behind the valances.

I'm not looking for the disco look, but might find a use for it if I happen upon it with all these lighting upgrades. Does anyone have a disco ball they're not using?

Click to expand...

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No!! but I think I still have a copy of "Saturday Night Fever" on 8 Track if you need it? :lol:

Larry B

Anybody tried these red/warm white switchable dome LED lights? Apparently existing switch mechanisms can be used as electronics on board the LED allow alternate red/white light to illuminate.
Switchable Red/White 15-LED

I just bought 40 LEDs on dealsextreme.com for $115....which includes s/h.


Items
SKU Product Name Purchase Price Discounte Ordered Qty Gift Qty Shipped Qty Operations
94178 G4 3W 3500K 180-Lumen 15x5050 SMD LED Warm White Light Bulb (12V) USD$ 2.85 USD$ 0.85 40 0 0 [Review]
Goods Total: USD$ 114.00
+ Shipping Fee: USD$ 1.70
- Discount Total: USD$ 0.00
Grand Total:USD$ 115.70

I finally replaced my old incadescent dome lights with Aqua Signal red/white LED dome lights.

Each light used to draw 1.7 amps, or over 8 amps with 5 lights on together. Now 5 dome lights together draw less than 0.5 amps and the light coverage is better than before. The warmth of the lights is very comparable, but cleaner than the incandescent dome lights.

The price at $50 per light is much greater than replacement LED components for existing fixtures. Since our old fixtures showed signs of overheating and bonding to our headliner, we chose to start over again with new fixtures.

We love the upgrade.