A low cost LED lamp for your anchor light - some test results

BlueChip

BlueChip

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There was a thread here a few weeks ago about LED bulbs for the Davis automatic anchor light.- http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=281135&highlight=davis+led

One specialist supplier was offering LED'S for about £16 each when similar looking devices are available on eBay for about 70p.

Some on here were reluctant to accept that these low cost LED's can be suitable and theories about brightness, consumption and the ability to stand voltage overload were put forward.

I thought I would check it out and ordered two bulbs from eBay supplier
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/300565859042?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649 these cost me just £1.59 for two with free p& P

These just arrived and I have been playing with them and comparing them with the standard tungsten lamp fitted to my Davis lamp which I know performs well and is usually by far the brightest anchor light in the anchorage.

I have a digital adjustable voltage power supply where I can dial in 12.0V and measure the current drawn, so first I measure the tungsten lamp. This drew 0.19A
I dont have a light meter, but there is a very handy Android app "Light Meter 1.4" that provides an analog meter scale of 0-100 Lux. With the meter about 1m away from my Galaxy S2 phone I measured 80 Lux.

I swapped the tungsten bulb for the LED, it fits the lamp holder without any modifications and it was immediately obvious that the LED is actually significantly visually brighter than the original tungsten lamp.

I made the same measurements using the LED, it drew just 0.12A and gave a reading of 100 Lux on the meter. There was no obvious falling off of the light as the lamp was turned, even though there LED's are fitted at 90 degree angles, I think the Fresnel screen must disperse the light. I did notice that the LED position wasn't in the optimum position to be lined up for the clear centre ring of the Fresnel, if it was the lamp would be even brighter.

To see what the over voltage handling of the LED I wound up the volts on the power supply expecting the lamp to fail, I got to 16V and held it there for some time but the LED remained lit. It seems that even these low cost devices must have some over voltage protection, the current consumed did increase though with higher voltage. I don't consider this important because I wont be charging when I am at anchor.

Finally, the bulb is polarised but my Davis light cigar lighter plug was wired correctly so I didn't need to make any wiring changes.

The tests are hardly scientific but they do reinforce what I saw visually.

So my conclusion is you pay your money and take your choice, £16.65 plus shipping for a 'marine LED' from a marine supplier such as Boatlamps or £1.59 for two regular LED's delivered from eBay. On the basis of my tests the low cost solution will perform at least as well if not better than the standard bulb.

I'm planning to be away this weekend and will try it out on the water.
 
BlueChip said:
There was a thread here a few weeks ago about LED bulbs for the Davis automatic anchor light.- http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=281135&highlight=davis+led

One specialist supplier was offering LED'S for about £16 each when similar looking devices are available on eBay for about 70p.

Some on here were reluctant to accept that these low cost LED's can be suitable and theories about brightness, consumption and the ability to stand voltage overload were put forward.

I thought I would check it out and ordered two bulbs from eBay supplier
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/300565859042?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649 these cost me just £1.59 for two with free p& P

These just arrived and I have been playing with them and comparing them with the standard tungsten lamp fitted to my Davis lamp which I know performs well and is usually by far the brightest anchor light in the anchorage.

I have a digital adjustable voltage power supply where I can dial in 12.0V and measure the current drawn, so first I measure the tungsten lamp. This drew 0.19A
I dont have a light meter, but there is a very handy Android app "Light Meter 1.4" that provides an analog meter scale of 0-100 Lux. With the meter about 1m away from my Galaxy S2 phone I measured 80 Lux.

I swapped the tungsten bulb for the LED, it fits the lamp holder without any modifications and it was immediately obvious that the LED is actually significantly visually brighter than the original tungsten lamp.

I made the same measurements using the LED, it drew just 0.12A and gave a reading of 100 Lux on the meter. There was no obvious falling off of the light as the lamp was turned, even though there LED's are fitted at 90 degree angles, I think the Fresnel screen must disperse the light. I did notice that the LED position wasn't in the optimum position to be lined up for the clear centre ring of the Fresnel, if it was the lamp would be even brighter.

To see what the over voltage handling of the LED I wound up the volts on the power supply expecting the lamp to fail, I got to 16V and held it there for some time but the LED remained lit. It seems that even these low cost devices must have some over voltage protection, the current consumed did increase though with higher voltage. I don't consider this important because I wont be charging when I am at anchor.

Finally, the bulb is polarised but my Davis light cigar lighter plug was wired correctly so I didn't need to make any wiring changes.

The tests are hardly scientific but they do reinforce what I saw visually.

So my conclusion is you pay your money and take your choice, £16.65 plus shipping for a 'marine LED' from a marine supplier such as Boatlamps or £1.59 for two regular LED's delivered from eBay. On the basis of my tests the low cost solution will perform at least as well if not better than the standard bulb.

I'm planning to be away this weekend and will try it out on the water.
Click to expand...

But the power saving is a miserly 0.07A. it it really worth the trouble
 
sailorman said:
But the power saving is a miserly 0.07A. it it really worth the trouble
Click to expand...

I'm sure there's a decimal point wrong in the tungsten - 1.9amps perhaps?

I agree with the points made having changed most of the Kipper's bulbs to LED, the saving so far if half the lights were on simultaneously is 6amps and the children's reading lights can stay on 24/7 now for all the juice they use (about 1AH a day) instead of me going all ARP Warden and shouting "put that light out":D

All the new LED bulbs cost under £1 each from China except two specialist ones from a car parts supplier on eBay for about £3. The "marine" bulbs from "marine suppliers" were ridiculously expensive.
 
I have some good news and bad news LED wise.
I bought a number of 63 surface mounted leds, and they are significantly bright in the nav lights as compared to tunsten bulbs.. that the good news.

I needed 1157 type bulbs for overhead lights in heads and forecabin. The twin contact led bulbs arrived with 12 leds and a white plastic surround. When used to push and turn into the sockets, the white plastic surround turned, breaking the connections between the led pcb at the top of the bulb, and the twin contact base... totally useless avoid
 
Do any of these LEDs incorporate high frequency strobe circuitry? In IR remote controls the LEDs are strobed so as to drive the LED with a high current, producing maximum intensity light output, with low mean power and thus low current drain. A strobed LED would give a much greater apparent light output using far less power. They would not appear to be strobing to the naked eye.
 
The Davis is under 2.5W it and the 20% brighter eBay LED, are very unlikely to meet the collision requirements (10w is generally required for a tungston bulb ).

Anchor lights like the Bebi owl
http://www.bebi-electronics.com/owl.html
are not expensive($32), reliable and will meet the collision requirements. It uses half the power of the eBay LED It doesn’t even need a housing so its probably much the same total cost as the converted Davis.
 
Another thankyou for the post, useful information. My experience is of LEDs bought from Sea Rolf, their nav lights are the correct colour, so red, green LEDs where needed. The construction is good as well, I had to handle them less lightly than I would have liked to get them into the sockets (this for the cabin lights). But they aren't cheap. I have bought cheap solar panels as well and they are fine but could have been fitted with more substantial cabling. I get the impression that the base components of the cheap stuff (i.e. the actual LEDS and PV cells) are fine but the rest of the product is where you need to be careful when you buy...
 
BlueChip said:
There was a thread here a few weeks ago about LED bulbs for the Davis automatic anchor light.- http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=281135&highlight=davis+led

One specialist supplier was offering LED'S for about £16 each when similar looking devices are available on eBay for about 70p.

Some on here were reluctant to accept that these low cost LED's can be suitable and theories about brightness, consumption and the ability to stand voltage overload were put forward.

I thought I would check it out and ordered two bulbs from eBay supplier
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/300565859042?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649 these cost me just £1.59 for two with free p& P

These just arrived and I have been playing with them and comparing them with the standard tungsten lamp fitted to my Davis lamp which I know performs well and is usually by far the brightest anchor light in the anchorage.

I have a digital adjustable voltage power supply where I can dial in 12.0V and measure the current drawn, so first I measure the tungsten lamp. This drew 0.19A
I dont have a light meter, but there is a very handy Android app "Light Meter 1.4" that provides an analog meter scale of 0-100 Lux. With the meter about 1m away from my Galaxy S2 phone I measured 80 Lux.

I swapped the tungsten bulb for the LED, it fits the lamp holder without any modifications and it was immediately obvious that the LED is actually significantly visually brighter than the original tungsten lamp.

I made the same measurements using the LED, it drew just 0.12A and gave a reading of 100 Lux on the meter. There was no obvious falling off of the light as the lamp was turned, even though there LED's are fitted at 90 degree angles, I think the Fresnel screen must disperse the light. I did notice that the LED position wasn't in the optimum position to be lined up for the clear centre ring of the Fresnel, if it was the lamp would be even brighter.

To see what the over voltage handling of the LED I wound up the volts on the power supply expecting the lamp to fail, I got to 16V and held it there for some time but the LED remained lit. It seems that even these low cost devices must have some over voltage protection, the current consumed did increase though with higher voltage. I don't consider this important because I wont be charging when I am at anchor.

Finally, the bulb is polarised but my Davis light cigar lighter plug was wired correctly so I didn't need to make any wiring changes.

The tests are hardly scientific but they do reinforce what I saw visually.

So my conclusion is you pay your money and take your choice, £16.65 plus shipping for a 'marine LED' from a marine supplier such as Boatlamps or £1.59 for two regular LED's delivered from eBay. On the basis of my tests the low cost solution will perform at least as well if not better than the standard bulb.

I'm planning to be away this weekend and will try it out on the water.
Click to expand...

As the proprietor of Boatlamps I would appreciate it if when quoting my company's prices you would at least make the effort to accurately quote them. My cost for a replacement Davis light lamp is £6.50 and NOT £16.65.

Also I suggest you take another look at a video produced by Marinebeam a well respected US supplier of LED lamps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hLCd4PnO7Y&feature=mfu_channel&list=UL


I think boat owners will make up their own minds on whether they feel lucky and want to take a chance.
 
BlueChip said:
[...]
Some on here were reluctant to accept that these low cost LED's can be suitable and theories about brightness, consumption and the ability to stand voltage overload were put forward.

I thought I would check it out and ordered two bulbs from eBay supplier
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/300565859042?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649 these cost me just £1.59 for two with free p& P
[...]
The tests are hardly scientific but they do reinforce what I saw visually.

So my conclusion is you pay your money and take your choice,
[...]
Click to expand...

Useful post, thanks. Apart from the boat, it's reminded me to replace my rear lights with LEDs, as the tungstens keep failing ... something to do with using too much gusto when closing the boot, methinks.
 
As an electrical engineer, I agree 100% with Adrian on this. When we first started using LED's over 30 years ago resistor burn out was all too common especially where a stable voltage supply could not be guaranteed. We used to see melted solder on PCB's some in a marine and aircraft environment! The fire risk was considerable.

Properly designed LED lighting gives reliable fit and forget service uses low current consumption and good light output.
 
LED bulbs

All very interesting stuff. Thanks for the link Adrian. I think 14.8 volts is a bit high unless you are running a smart charge controller. So yes you would need to keep an eye on voltage if running engine. Certainly for me a fire would be the least of my worries. But still worth considering. A small series resistor would remove any concern but reduce brightness.
Interesting that the bulbs in the test appear to be the same as OP had bought. The light seemed to run OK with one surface mount LED fallen off so I wondered if it were practical to remove the top LED so light just radiated in the azimuth as for an anchor light. It is a pity for the OP that the LEDs did not align with the fresnel lens as that would really concentrate light in the right direction. The bulb would then probably work quite well ina plain glass jar. Anyway keep fiddling.
Adrian I am sure your products do the job really well. It must be hard to compete with Hong Kong prices.
Of course if your bulbs have a switch mode current regulator you will have a wide voltage range that it works with constant brightness but of course these can give radio interference compared to the humble resistor with no interference.
 
Adrian Jones said:
I think boat owners will make up their own minds on whether they feel lucky and want to take a chance.
Click to expand...

As an electronics engineer, I would suggest that using LEDs with a simple dropper resistor is not a sensible option for critical lighting. I assume that the LEDs in Adrian's lights have a stabilised current source to drive the LEDs, perhaps he can confirm this.
 
nigelmercier said:
As an electronics engineer, I would suggest that using LEDs with a simple dropper resistor is not a sensible option for critical lighting. I assume that the LEDs in Adrian's lights have a stabilised current source to drive the LEDs, perhaps he can confirm this.
Click to expand...

Yes all Boatlamps products have PWM, Buck Constant-Current electronics built onto the PCB and will give constant brightness and more importantly constant current at all voltages specified for the respective lamp. Most lamps are good for any voltage between 10-30V.

I have never had any complaints in respect of VHF interference, I use LED lamps throughout my own boat for both navigation and internal lighting purposes and have never had a problem with them interfering with any communication equipment. If our lamps did interfere with any equipment we would not sell them! Our lamps meet CE approval insofar as coms interference standards are concerned.
 
Adrian Jones said:
As the proprietor of Boatlamps I would appreciate it if when quoting my company's prices you would at least make the effort to accurately quote them. My cost for a replacement Davis light lamp is £6.50 and NOT £16.65.
Click to expand...

I don't see where "Blue Chip" was referring to a Davis light lamp ???

However: referring to this on your site:
NEW VERY BRIGHT LED ANCHOR BULB - CONVERT TO DUSK TO DAWN

This unique marine product is an automatic daylight sensing replacement 15-LED bulb, which automatically comes on at dusk, and turns off again at dawn. It is a simple drop in replacement for your existing Aqua Signal, Hella, Perko or other anchor light.

Then it is £16.65 plus shipping
 
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