LED Cabin Light Conversion

[richandlori]

I just converted all of my old school halogen and incandesent lights to LED, and am quite happy with the supplier. I posted a few photos along with the suppliers info Here


Rich
Happy with new LEDs in Mexico

[Rick Westlake]

LEDs do make a difference, even if it's just knowing you aren't drawing down the batteries. You can get the light you need for a much lower amount of watts; and their average operating life is half-past forever.

The "camper-trailer" lights belowdecks in Bossa Nova took regular bayonet bulbs, and I found suitable replacements from "superbrightleds.com" - they use a small circuit board for the LEDs, pigtailed to a bayonet-bulb style base and taped with double-sided foam tape into the top of the fixture. Current draw, microscopic. Plenty bright for reading. I paid about $15 each for "warm white" LED lights, and consider it money well spent.

[red_sky_at_night]

Great idea, on my to do list when I get my Mac, along with a Coleman hot water on demand system for hot showers (I'm in Canada, I'm sure a cold shower is more to your liking in Mexico)

[Russ]

LEDs are the way to go. We have 2 in our cabin and will add more. So easy to convert. Just takes money. It's a boat, pour money into the hole in the water.
I'm grateful it's so easy now to retrofit old fixtures.

--Russ

[Kelly Hanson East]

Ive found in our summer cruising we just dont use the lights enough to significantly run the batteries down. We come off the beach at 7pm, cook dinner and are in bed by 9pm. Maybe 2 hours of lights per night. That works out to 48 Watt hours per night out of a total battery capacity of 2kW hours (total, 100% drained)

[dthomas]

LEDs are the way to go. We have 2 in our cabin and will add more. So easy to convert. Just takes money. It's a boat, pour money into the hole in the water.
I'm grateful it's so easy now to retrofit old fixtures.

--Russ

I'm in the process of replacing all the incandescent bulbs in the Second Wind with LED's I bought from MarineBeam. So far, I've been very, very happy with the results and I really glad they are so easy to swap out. And yah, it just takes money - 10 G4 (@ $35 each) and 7 MR16 (@ $30 each) = broke sailor. Bigger boat = bigger bills. That said, the result is awesome - the salon is much brighter and the energy consumption is FAR lower. We installed a Victron BMV battery monitor in the Spring and it has been incredibly useful for learning what equipment is consuming what power. I was able to see an immediate difference in "energy consumed" and don't really worry about leaving lights on anymore. The one big thing I can't easily do (and makes me *really* miss the MacGregor), is change out the anchor light. I've either got to go up the mast or wait for the off-season to drop it. Bummer.

Anyway, LED's are great and if you use your lights much, definitely worth the money.

Dean Thomas
Allen Harbor, RI
Formerly Lion's Paw, 1999 MacGregor 26X
Now Second Wind, 2001 Beneteau 361

[Trouts Dream]

I also switched to all LED in the cabin and installed an LED mast light.
I could probably run on just one battery (have 2 deep cycles) with the new draw. Really comfortable with the battery load now and leave lights on until we go to bed and there is still enough juice left to charge the laptop for another movie.

[dvideohd]

I went to the Marinebeam web site ( www.marinebeam.com ) and was very impressed by the products and technology they show.....

FWIW - I have designed small computer systems for 30+ years - and a number of these were LED based illumination systems. I don't have any "interest" in Marinebeam (disclaimer), but I can appreciate what they are doing.

While stock light bulbs are almost all similiar - as an incandescent bullb might appear to be - the same is JUST NOT TRUE for modern, energy efficient bulbs... CFLs like you buy at the Big Box store are PLAGUED with unreliability..... I bought 6 at Walmart one time... 2 quickly FAILED.. So there you might be- purchasing bulbs to reduce power use and hopefully make a better environment - and then you suddenly have two Mercury Containing CFL bulbs to put in the trash.... I did not come out ahead - and that is the crux of the problem...

On LED "bulbs" - there is GREAT VARIATION in quality of LED and how people use it. One LED expert said that about 5% of the China factories were 1st quality - and the rest were "all over the place" - in manufacturing quality... Then to, how you drive the LED makes a huge difference..... Some HIGH QUALITY LED bulb replacements put our a lot of RF noise - interfering with electronics and magnetic systems.... SO it is REALLY IMPORTANT to know something about the LED bulb supplier....

Like I said.... I liked the technology I saw.... Would love to hear more user stories and product reviews about this.... LED stuff is magic when reducing energy usage and reducing long term costs...

--jerry

[skeedaddy]

my boat came with basically nothing....1992 '26.

the bow and stern work, but their wires conduct through a good deal of rust.

there are virtually no working interior lights at all.

my wife and I want to be able to camp on the boat with the kids in the cooler weather (summers reach 206 degrees fahrenheit here in North Texas in the summer....only a slight exageration). So, we're installing battery operated leds that you can buy at wal mart for like 3/$10. They stick to a smooth flat surface and turn on/off by pushing them. The link below is similar to what we are looking at. But the ones on the shelf at my local store are white and cheaper.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product. ... ductDetail

There is no light at all on the mast, so i'll have to order, run wires, and install...but i've been looking forward to learning about the wiring system anyway.
I figure we'll learn soon enough if those battery operated interior lights will work well enough or not. If they don't, we'll wire up some better ones and run them off the battery. But maybe, just maybe, they'll do the trick! I'd like to save the battery for other things like a deck light and a radio.

Fun and Yucks!

[Hamin' X]

Just a note on the RFI (Radio Frequency Interference) issue. Only LED lights that use electronic voltage regulators are subject to this problem and then, only those of poor design. The LED's that use resistors for current limiting, do not have this problem.

~Rich

[Duane Dunn, Allegro]

I put in the small circuit board panels 1142-PCB-WWHP9 from http://www.superbrightleds.com 2 years ago and they have been great.

The warm white has the color temp of an incandescent and the 9 high power SMD LED's provide a very wide light pattern so you get the same warm glow in the cabin instead of a refrigerator white light that only goes directly down from the fixture.

Current draw is so low that my Link 10 current/amp hour meter does not even register the load numerically (it only displays to the 0.1 amp level), you just get a 'minus' sign indicating some small load is there.

The install was a breeze, I used a small piece of foam between the circuit board and the bayonet base for insulation and simply used a single small cable tie to attach the circuit board to the base. The wired power lead simply twists in the bayonet base. Almost as simple as changing a standard bulb.

[nedmiller]

I, like Duane, put in the superbrights, and agree that installation was easy. I really can't tell the difference in lighting brightness or 'warmth' in color from the original. No radio noise and zero problems. We don't have to be nearly as careful about how long we keep the lights on now!

Ned

[kmclemore]

I replaced the bulb in the lamp over the galley with one of the Superbright 1156-PCB-x36 units. However, after less than 3 months very sparse use most of the LED's have failed and even when it was in use it wasn't terribly bright - certainly not as bright as the original lamp. And the cold weather really hurt the performance - in fact when cold enough they won't even operate. I was not impressed.

[Duane Dunn, Allegro]

The LED's in the 36 light units are the old style standard brightness gen 1 LED's. They are also the cold white color temp which I find to be very un-appealing.

The warm white color option of the SMD LED's is much more pleasing and the brightness and wide 120 degree pattern easily matches the 10w incandescent bulb.

Mine have been in 2 years with no issues. I also thing the surface mount SMD's may be more reliable.

[J.Teixeira]

I replaced all mi bulbs some time ago with

http://www.ebay.com

12V / 24V G4 LED 10 Very Bright LEDs, White, Low Energy



Direct replacement on Mac bulbs...

http://cgi.ebay.com/12V-24V-G4-LED-10-V ... .m14.l1262

14 USD

Equivalence 10 W light

Results were fine... (in sumer the bulbs have also the advantage of been cold)

Also replace navigation lights with leds...

Jose