-
Posts
-
Another prompted from one of Pippi’s videos. When I bought my coach the first thing I noticed was that with the lights all on it was as hot as all get out. Also I was using a lot of energy. The culprit was the quartz halogen bulbs. Hate those things! They burn out quickly in addition to getting hot and being energy hogs. They’re also the ones that you aren’t supposed to touch the glass because the oils in your hand deteriorate the glass… early failure.
I knew I wanted to replace all, or as many of these bulbs with LED’s as possible. I started researching and found a huge difference in price. You can get these bulbs on the internet for next to nothing. I admit to being leery of that as frequently you get what you pay for. Because I wasn’t sure what I needed I went to an on line vendor who came highly recommended. I’ll post the link here, if it’s not appropriate please remove. I’ll tell the other reasons why I chose this vendor. https://www.superbrightleds.com/
This is a US company. They have excellent customer service, I called and explained what I needed and the telephone service rep was able to help me decided exactly what I needed. Finally, they have an exceptional return policy, which I have used.
The bulbs from this company are expensive, but in my humble opinion well worth the price. I have heard horror stories of the budget LED’s burning out as well as actually burning up! To Pippi, you didn’t like the “Blue” which is actually what I chose. I wanted brighter lighting so that I could see what I was doing, as well as brighter light to read by. With one exception. We have a nook where we keep our coffee maker. Silly, but I wanted a more traditional light for that area. Instead of the Blue, I chose the “Yellow” bulbs. These give off the mor traditional incandescent yellowish light bulb color most people are used to. LED’s with the same mount type, blade, push in. pole, etc. do come with more or fewer LED’s for more or less total output.
The only problem I had with my retrofit and not a “new” system was the dimmer switches. I unfortunately had to leave in the Halogen bulbs on the dimmers. The LED bulbs do not have enough load to make the dimmer switches work. My dimmers don’t have a positive “Off” position. Therefore the LED’s do not provide enough load. In other words, they don’ turn off. 🙁 There are dimmers available to solve this problem but I have three separate switches that would have to be rewired so for now, that’s out. All in all though I love my LED’s.
Don
Darn, almost forgot. And this is important! LED’s are expensive! You will save on replacement costs as the good ones last forever. If you boon dock, you will absolutely fall in love with the miserly 12v power use. But the initial investment is high.Thanks Don. I’ve since bought the warmer LED’s. They’re great for energy consumption however I still find they get very hot. I thought they weren’t supposed to do that..
I tried the LEDs from Camping World and have some reservations about them. First is that they are rated just for 12 volts. No biggie right? Wrong. When your convertor is converting either AC shore power or generator AC power DC it doesn’t produce 12 volts. It produces much more, at least 13.5 volts. When I charge my batteries with my genny(I’m a boondocker and live untethered to the grid) I push 15.2 volts into my batteries. This isn’t too much. Go to your battery manufactures website and see what they recommend for Absorption and Equalization charges as well as how long you’re to stay at that voltage. 15.2 volts is actually less that what Interstate recommends. Anyhow, batteries and charging them is a whole nuther thread but seriously check your battery manufacturer and look at the charging recommendations.
Back on track here, The lights are rated at 12V and I was pushing much more and started frying the lights with more voltage than they were designed to handle. I actually measured the voltage at the light socked and it was measuring over 15V. Try measuring your sockets with a multimeter. You may surprise yourself. Anyhow, I started looking into LED lights and some were rated for 12V and had a voltage limiter built into it so I knew it wasn’t just me. I was surprised that my motorhome wasn’t equipped with a DC-DC convertor to limit the amount of voltage/current going to the DC system. In all fairness, the lights from CW had diodes that should have kept that voltage in check but I guess it was too much voltage for them.
I looked at superbrightLED and didn’t really like the selection of bayonet mount lights. Those are the kind that a lot of RVs have and are like your taillight sockets(BA15s round base). I somehow ran across a site called M4 Products and they had what I wanted. It’s an 1156 in natural white so is’t not too blue and not too yellow, just white light. It’s also rated at 10-30V DC. O-O-O, I’m liking it so far. The calculated lumens are 565 so this thing is BRIGHT.
I bought just one bulb to test it. I wasn’t disappointed. That one LED light pumps out a huge amount of light at .28 amps. The voltage was the big concern. If you’re at the low end, 10 volts on a 12V system then your batteries are dead and I mean replacement time dead. A 12 volt battery is at 0% charge at 10.5 volts so if you’re at 10 volts then you have more expensive problems than an LED light bulb. On the upper end, I charge at 15.2 volts so I’m well under the 30 volt maximum. I should be good to go with these lights.
Caveat: I haven’t tested these lights for more that a few days but have been impressed enough to order 10 more to totally equip Thor, my motorhome. At $13 each this isn’t a huge sum of money when you consider how much money I just spent on something that doesn’t work(over $100 on the CW lights). A side not is that this light does get hot. Not as hot as an incandescent but it has a metal housing and WILL be hot to the touch so caveat emptor.So there it is. My experience to date with LED lights. I have no problem with answering questions about my experience and do hope you benefit from my experience.
Thank you for the post. I didn’t even think about the voltage spike. I imagine that newwer motorhomes may have built-in 12vDC voltage regulator(s) around the RV to ensure that voltage to various things like lights won’t cause issues, but on older RV’s such as mine they used old school lights that don’t matter if they get 13.5 volts.
I recommend possibly installing a 12volt DC voltage regulator at various points where power is distributed, if possible to things like lights. Since cutting power usage at each light can really add up, i imagine that say, at 4 lights and half amp drop in usage per, you can get away with a 12vDC voltage regulator rated at say, 4 amps would cover safely 4-5 or even 6 of the newer low power consumption light bulbs without an issue. .23 amps.. round up .5 amp per bulb… that’s $14-20 in cost to for the regulator itself for every ~6 LED’s. nice.
Of course, every situation will be different, such as access to the wiring distribution points, et cetera and even if a person wants to go for it, try it and not burn the place down.
When i get the chance to do this on my RV, i will and when i do, i’ll post a video on it and share it here.
Stratman50th,
I looked at the vendor you bought from and saw a 5 SMD bulb sold for $6, where I can get the exact same thing from ebay 20/dollar!!!Those so-called “American companies” get bulk from Alibaba.com (off course from China, much cheaper than ebay) and in the example i compared multiplied the price by 120.
This is my field, so I can give some advice here.
All the very expensive mains LED bulbs that are sold in places like Home Depot (that I try to never go to…overpriced in a funny way) are a category, while the low-voltage (around 12 volt) ones that come from China (ebay or an opportunist “American” seller) are a totally different category.
The first category never get hot as compared to the second one.
It is not the LED’s that get hot and consume power, but the current-limiting resistor(s) in the package. The first category doesn’t use resistors but semiconductors (power transistor current source). So, the best way is to get only LED components from ebay dirt cheat and a special LED power supply that is a couple of bucks and work on a project to make your own LED fixtures. That should be a nice project to consider. Believe me, you don’t need any advanced electronics training to do that. Here’s an example from youtube:This video shows how to get power led’s heat-sinked by the mounting Aluminum strip
This video makes the power supply (a little bit of electronics)
you may buy the LED power supply instead of soldering one, like here:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1w-3w-4-5w-4-7w-8-15w-LED-Power-Driver-Light-Power-Supply-AC-85-265V-Stable-Firm-/361162518443?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&var=&hash=item5416f6afabor here:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/5A-DC-Buck-Converter-CC-CV-12v-5v-24V-car-Solar-Battery-Charger-LED-Drive-w-PWM-/271658174332?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f4016c77c
I’m quoting what the people of Make said in one of their comments to this last video “Typically LEDs require a resistor (for each LED) to resist your supply voltage and deliver the precise voltage required by the LED to emit. Because the maker wanted to use 12VDC for use in motor homes (engines typically use 12V batteries), he multiplied the LEDs into series of 3 (3.3V x 3 = 9.9V). The 555 provides the timing sequence needed to provide Pulse Width Modulation, so the LEDs flash faster than your persistence of vision at approximately 10V per series (without resistor!).”Please Pippi, remove the URL’s that I posted if that is not appropriate
If you aren’t going to DIY, then I suggest this company.
One thing I’d like to note about the LED light bar in the video posted above…you can use 2-part plastic epoxy (from Wal Mart) and electronics heat-sink compound instead of JB Weld. Mix the (3) ‘ingredients’ together and use as normal to attach the LED to the bar. The heat sink compound adds additional heat-transfer properties. I have done this to attach a heat-sink to a flat surface that didn’t have screw points. Works great!
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.