led light conversion

[station tug]

hi, iv converted my bulkhead lights to led...the led's iv used are on flee bay Item number: 180718394513 ...i unscrewed the old bulb holder,cut the wire's and pre soldered..the led's have two quite long prongs so i snipped those back to about 4mm slid some shrink wrap onto the wires and soldered the wire to the led's then slid the shrink tube over the solder, i used a blob of hi temp clear silicone to hold the led to the light.....its cost less than £2. for each light and should make a considerable saving in power taken from my battery bank.....

 

Edited September 19, 2011 by station tug

[blodger]

Yes it is definitely worth doing. Since I did it with LED's better and cheaper SMD's have come out which I'll slowly change to.

[Offcumden]

Did something similar with the swivel Frog eye ? type.

Removed eyesocket, wired in LED and bluetacked new brass rim and glass to original fitting

[Naughty Cal]

It has certainly made a huge difference to our power consumption onboard. The ammetere doesnt even mive when the lights are turned on now. A massive power saving when compared with the 6 10w lights and 2 25w lights previously. We are upgrading our navigation lights tp include an LED anchir light next.

[Dovetail]

I did the same thing but just got the led light with the same fitting as my old lights it required no mess just old bulb out replace with new led.

 

The array of led lights are vast and are made so they can fit just about almost any light fitting although you have to pay a bit more for the pleasure.

 

One thing I did do was to keep a couple of lights halogen as the led’s are good but at times you do need a stronger light at times.

 

It made a big saving on power from the battery’s I can have all the led lights on in the boat and they still take less power than one of the old lights, well worth doing.

[NB Willawaw]

Also, even the warm white LEDs never seem as warm as halogen.

 

Its quite good to have a mix - you can then choose what you want to use for the application.

 

I tend to use LEDs as ambient downlighter light and halogen as reading lights.

 

There is a myriad of LED/SMD lights out there now and the range is growing all the time - sometimes its just easier to find the right one for the fitting you have, if you can.

Edited September 20, 2011 by NB Willawaw

[The Bagdad Boatman (waits)]

I tried several led swivel spots and lights but found them failing so went back to florescent type suspect they did not like variable voltage when engine running.

[NB Willawaw]

Could be cheap LEDs.

 

Decent ones, which usually aren't cheap, have protection up to 16V.

[bottle]

Most led lights are now rated at 10 to 30v so well within the range of boat use.

 

You gets what you paid for.

[Keeping Up]

If you put LEDs in your navigation lights, would a "white" one shine through the red and green plastic filters, or would you have to use a red and a green LED ?

[Evo]

Just doing the LED conversion thing on my boat. Bought all the led 'bulbs' for my existing sockets (mainly G4) from china. Total cost £40 and that includes multiple spares of each. I've bought bright, super bright, and warm. Keeping my mega powerful Halogen reading light.

 

Do you still need to wire in a capacitor with these things..??

 

If they all go bang (which I doubt) I've saved a packet over buying them here. In fact I could buy them all again 3 times over before I get near the cost of buying them here...its ridiculous. Ok they take 25 days to arrive.

[bizzard]

Did all mine two years ago.

I'm all Bedazzled

[landroversforever]

If you put LEDs in your navigation lights, would a "white" one shine through the red and green plastic filters, or would you have to use a red and a green LED ?

Its still a white light they give out which is obviously made up of all the colours so the filters will still do their job .

[Keeping Up]

Its still a white light they give out which is obviously made up of all the colours so the filters will still do their job .

 

Not obviously, they could possibly be emitting three monochromatic colours which wouldn't shine through the filter unless they happened to match it's passband.

 

Speaking theoretically, because I don't know the real answer.

[landroversforever]

Maybe we were mislead in physics lessons, I was under the impression that all white light is made up of the colours?!

[Chalky]

Most led lights are now rated at 10 to 30v so well within the range of boat use.

 

You gets what you paid for.

 

30V isn't enough - the transients are higher than that.

 

Not obviously, they could possibly be emitting three monochromatic colours which wouldn't shine through the filter unless they happened to match it's passband.

 

Speaking theoretically, because I don't know the real answer.

 

White LEDs don't contain all of the colours in the spectrum. They are made by using a UV light source to excite a phosphor that generates the "white" light. (they glow for a few seconds after being turned off due to phosphor). If you look at a spectrograph of a white LED you'll see it's very peaky with some very strong disctinct colour bands and others virtually absent e.g. the cold white LEDS are nearly all blue and green.

 

You can buy "white" leds that use single Red, green, blue leds however the leds age at different rates and are affected by temperature and current / voltage fluctuations at different rates so these often develop a colour cast after a period of use.

Edited September 20, 2011 by Chalky

[WotEver]

Its still a white light they give out ...

It's not, you know...

 

 

Tony

 

As Chalky says, it gets quite complex with various manufacturers trying different techniques. If you want to read some in-depth info there's an interesting article here.

[landroversforever]

Well you learn something new every day . thanks

[Keeping Up]

So I still wonder whether I could simply replace the bulbs in my nav lights with white LEDs.

 

It's probably a good thing that I never use them anyway!

[bizzard]

Got all mine from Bedazzled two years ago as direct replacements for halogen bulbs,have been faultless.

Mind you i haven't got crazy great inverters and massive battery banks,all nice and simple. bizzard.

[by'eck]

If you put LEDs in your navigation lights, would a "white" one shine through the red and green plastic filters, or would you have to use a red and a green LED ?

 

About five years ago I replaced the 25 watt BA15 tungsten bulb in my mast head tricolour with a 15 element LED with same base. It worked well enough for someone 7nm behind to just see the white sector on a clear dark night. The colour sectors looked adequately bright as well. There are much more powerful versions available now though.

[bottle]

So I still wonder whether I could simply replace the bulbs in my nav lights with white LEDs.

 

It's probably a good thing that I never use them anyway!

 

You could but they would not comply with the regulations for colour,(and distance I believe) those sold with LED lamps have a different colour lens to correct the colour.

 

 

(That's a lot of colours, in there)

 

It was sometime ago when I looked into it all but there was also talk of the LED light output changing with age, this was also causing problems.

 

It was sometime go and the brain cells ain't what they used to be.

[nicknorman]

So I still wonder whether I could simply replace the bulbs in my nav lights with white LEDs.

 

It's probably a good thing that I never use them anyway!

Our newer aircrafft have coloured LEDs with clear lenses for the Nav lights. Only problem is you can't be sure Engineering have fitted the correct colour for the side ones unless you power them up!

 

As others have said, since white LEDs have a very limited selection of output frequencies, I think there is a fairly good chance that White Led with coloured filter would not look very good, and anyway it's wasteful of power since you are using energy to create the light, but then inserting a filter to absorb much of the spectrum and only pass a narrow range of light frequencies.

[by'eck]

hi, iv converted my bulkhead lights to led...the led's iv used are on flee bay Item number: 180718394513 ...i unscrewed the old bulb holder,cut the wire's and pre soldered..the led's have two quite long prongs so i snipped those back to about 4mm slid some shrink wrap onto the wires and soldered the wire to the led's then slid the shrink tube over the solder, i used a blob of hi temp clear silicone to hold the led to the light.....its cost less than £2. for each light and should make a considerable saving in power taken from my battery bank.....

 

Since your cutting & soldering anyway, would these 36 LED SMD clusters have been better assuming they would fit in of course.

[Keeping Up]

Our newer aircrafft have coloured LEDs with clear lenses for the Nav lights. Only problem is you can't be sure Engineering have fitted the correct colour for the side ones unless you power them up!

 

As others have said, since white LEDs have a very limited selection of output frequencies, I think there is a fairly good chance that White Led with coloured filter would not look very good, and anyway it's wasteful of power since you are using energy to create the light, but then inserting a filter to absorb much of the spectrum and only pass a narrow range of light frequencies.

 

That is very interesting indeed.

 

Of course, a green LED would not lose much light if it was shining through a green filter, as long as its wavelength fell within the passband of the filter (and similarly for the red). I wonder if you can get super-bright red and green LEDs that would do the job; I bet they'd be more efficient than having an incandescent bulb behind a green filter