LED Running Lights
Cheap if you make them and a fraction of the energy to run them
(2009) The following was posted in July of 2006...but boy have things changed since then. My homemade lights have worked well, but the industry is "in fact" revolutionizing lighting of all kinds, so shoot on down to the bottom of the page and see what I'm up to now...
FIRST, let me cut to the chase and get the link to Super Bright LED's established.
SECOND, let me tell you how impressed I am with these LED's. It's true, they will revolutionize the lighting industry, and there is a way to avoid the outrageous
profiteering going on with these things. LED's in the marine catalogs are outrageous. However, build them yourself and you'll fint the LED itself only costs a couple of bucks, the resistor is about a dime, and the rest is just your time and an old navigation light you can break to salvage the socket.
THIRD, they're not as bright as their incandescent brethren. However, they don't need to be. Normal incandescent lights put out all the colors, giving off a yellowish white light that we think of as "white light". They consume a lot of power putting out all those colors. We buy them powerful enough to emit enough of the color we need for a navigation light. The red or green lens flters out most of the lights hard work and only lets through the red or green color. So, for the sake of a little red, green or white, were burning lots of amps. Consider, 1 amp at 12 volts is only 12 watts. A conventional 10 watt lamp will consume 0.83 amps, or 830 miliamps. My green led cluster consumes only 120 miliamps. My stern light, which uses the white 8 mm led, has only two in it's cluster since they tend to be much brighter than the reds and greens, so it consumes less than 60 miliamps. By specification, these leds have a range of safe operating power, starting around 20 miliamps. I push mine a little harder, selecting a resistor that runs them about mid-way in their safe operating range. Example would be the green; its range is between 20 and 60 miliamps. I'm running mine at about 30 miliamps. All three lights are in and they seem as bright as the incanscent lights and more efficient since there is nothing for the lens to filter out. I immediately noticed the stainless housing for the stern light is cool to the touch; in the past it would leave a mark if I rested my arm on it.
Go to the link for SUPER BRIGHT LED'S and take a look at the variety and colors available. I selected the 360 degree viewable led's because they act just like miniature incandescent lights. They glow and emit from all angles, unlike most leds that emit light in a beam from something like 8 degrees to around 30 degrees or so. This flashlight beam characteristic isn't what we're always looking for. So, the 360 degree lights were right up my ally. I've only seen them at SUPER BRIGHT LED's.
In a nutshell, I went into this with no guidelines. I chose 3 leds (8 mm) to a cluster because it just seemed about right. I selected my resistors using the calculator at the SBL site, soldered as close as reasonable to the led on the anode side. That's the positive side, by the by. I took the three leds, grouped the wires and ran them through the hole left in the socket when I de-soldered the old element wires. NOTE: Leds are picky about their polarity. I marked the socket so I know which is the positive lead. They can stand to be hooked up backwards for just a short time, so put them into the socket and throw the switch, if it doesn't come on, rotate the socket 180 degree's and try again. I rebuilt the solder bead at the socket base, clipped and filed the wires so the socket base looked just as it did when it was hosting the incandescent light.
I'll post a couple of night pics with lights blaze soon! I'll also group up some more photos and details about the assembly process.
The New Stuff (2009)
The assy's above were sooooo yesterday! June 2009 and there hasn't been any grass growin' under the feet of the engineers in the LED industry.
The new SMD led's that came on board recently have blown the old "flux" style led's out of the water. I removed my old 8mm cluster lights that I made (pictured above) and have replaced the running lights with the HP6 lamps in red, green, and white light.
There are many different designs now being made, some very specific to certain applications. I removed most of the twin contact 1157 bases from my boat because of their age, and replaced the running lights with mini wedge bases and used the above mentioned HP6 light source. My cabin lights use the G4 base, so the cabin white light source will be the WHP10 and cabin red light source will be the xWHP6.
After fitting one cabin light with the led's, I was able to get an idea of power savings by watching my on-board voltmeters. One cabin light with incandescent lamps pulls the house battery down about 3 tenths of a volt the second their turned on....the cabin light with LED's, pulled the house batter down about 2 one hundreths of a volt. Absolutely incredible power savings and the light from the LED's is just as bright, maybe brighter. Now heres a kicker...the incandescent lights, when on, had things with 6 inch wingspans coming into the cabin like it was Pearl Harbor but when I turned it off and turned on the LED's, the cabin was just as lit but most of the bugs ignored the light and just flitted away. LED's emit specific wavelengths of the color you select. They emit "0" U.V. light which is what brings in so many of pesky bugs. I read later about the "0" U.V. thing and it validated what I observed in my cabin. Also, the incandescent lights get hotter than hell, the LED's remain cool, hence, the power savings.
