Googled "Replacing incandescent navigation lights with LED's"

VicS said:
Boatlamps are the experts in this field and offer a range of replacement LEDs for nav lights. You will find loadsa information and advice on their website https://boatlamps.co.uk/pages/navigation-lights-led-replacement-bulb-information

The one thing that stands out as not good enough is to use standard LEDs. They do not emit light in a continuous spectrum like filament lamps so there is no guarantee that they emit light that matches the colour spectrum of the coloured lenses. You have no knowledge of the light intensity and hence visible range when used in nav lights.

The use of Boatlamps warm white leds in red and green lights, bicolour and tricolour lights falls into the good enough category, although the use of cool white LEDs does not.

The better approach is to use the appropriate red and green LEDs in red and green lights, sectored LEDs in bicolour and tricolour lights and cool white LEDs in white lights.
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I used Boatlamps LED's for my nav lights. The supplied bulbs had coloured LED's that match the sectors in my bow bi-light and the mast tri-light. The colours look good to the naked eye and the range is hopefully better.
 
If I fit my ex white led to my hella bi colour bow light will the green change to being blue colour?
I ask as I have a redundant White anchor led as i've fitted a aqua signal led tri/anchor mast head light.
 
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robertj said:
If I fit my ex white led to my hella bi colour bow light will the green change to being blue colour?
I ask as I have a redundant White anchor led as i've fitted a aqua signal led tri/anchor mast head light.
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Depends if it's cool white or warm white. Warm white will be ok for the green whereas cool white would make it blue. Neither will be perfect for the red, but probably acceptable in practice. But much more important, and why I beg you not to fit it, is that the bi-colour lights are not designed to give the correct angles (cut-off etc) with a 'hedgehog' bulb and if you fit one you will be showing white to someone directly ahead, which is plainly wrong and would put you in an awkward position if a close-quaters situation arose.

imho there is little point saving much power for the low-down lights as usually one only uses them under engine or for short-ish times whereas that masthead tricolour is on all night, night-after-night if on an ocean passage, which is why the reduction in power offered by the LED is so tempting. But in that case what you've done - viz: to get one specifically designed for LEDs - is the right thing to do.
 
jdc said:
In case anyone's interested, the process for colour modelling was:
- obtain the spectra of the light emitted b the sources (incandescent and LED)
- convolve these with the spectral response of typical filters ...
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I am delighted to see the word "convolve" on YBW, but I'm little puzzled about why you convolved here. If you have a spectrum (fourier transform) for the input and a frequency-response function for the filter, could you not just multiply them together? Or was it easier to convolve in the time domain?

Sorry, rather technical question, but I used to do something a bit like this for a living, many (probably obviously) years ago.
 
jdc said:
Depends if it's cool white or warm white. Warm white will be ok for the green whereas cool white would make it blue. Neither will be perfect for the red, but probably acceptable in practice. But much more important, and why I beg you not to fit it, is that the bi-colour lights are not designed to give the correct angles (cut-off etc) with a 'hedgehog' bulb and if you fit one you will be showing white to someone directly ahead, which is plainly wrong and would put you in an awkward position if a close-quaters situation arose.
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I have walked across my bows - some distance away - in a marina to check, and it's never white. It wasn't even very yellow.
 
Well you're quite right: I multiplied in the Fourier domain, which sloppily as you correctly note I called convolution. Thanks for the admonition (yes really, I am grateful!). I've got in the poor habit of calling it convolution since I was more recently lifting signals in the time domain out of noise.

PS: Because this was for club purposes it contravened the terms of my Matlab licence, so I had to do it all from scratch, hence its amateur nature / rotten graphic.
 
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jdc said:
Well you're quite right: I multiplied in the Fourier domain, which sloppily as you correctly note I called convolution. Thanks for the admonition (yes really, I am grateful!). I've got in the poor habit of calling it convolution since I was more recently lifting signals in the time domain out of noise.
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Thanks. I was worried that I was losing even more of my grip!

PS: Because this was for club purposes it contravened the terms of my Matlab licence, so I had to do it all from scratch, hence its amateur nature / rotten graphic.
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Graphics look fine to me. Have you tried GNU Octave as an alternative to Matlab?
 
Why use coloured leds behind coloured lenses? Surely a clear lens avoids the spectral matching problems.

As I had some old but unused Lucas (remember them?) lights which are remarkably well engineered, I removed the innards and replaced the single lamp fitting with a curved (heat and a jubilee clip!) printed circuit board. The sectors are determined by the mechanics of the housing and the placement of the leds.
 
Graham_Wright said:
Why use coloured leds behind coloured lenses? Surely a clear lens avoids the spectral matching problems.

As I had some old but unused Lucas (remember them?) lights which are remarkably well engineered, I removed the innards and replaced the single lamp fitting with a curved (heat and a jubilee clip!) printed circuit board. The sectors are determined by the mechanics of the housing and the placement of the leds.
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I think because the original question was about replacing filament bulbs in existing nav light assemblies, which will have coloured lenses, with LEDs

Non coloured lenses will be fine with leds of the correct colour them seslves. and warm white leds are apparently satisfactory behind coloured lenses.

If you do a DIY job such as you suggest with the old Lucas lights how do you know the luminous intensity and hence visible range, of the finished article?
 
VicS said:
I think because the original question was about replacing filament bulbs in existing nav light assemblies, which will have coloured lenses, with LEDs

Non coloured lenses will be fine with leds of the correct colour them seslves. and warm white leds are apparently satisfactory behind coloured lenses.

If you do a DIY job such as you suggest with the old Lucas lights how do you know the luminous intensity and hence visible range, of the finished article?
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I do take Graham's point and taking it further you could use a fitting designed as a steaming light with a bi colour LED bulb and/or an anchor light fitting with a tri colour LEN bulb.

I personally have warm white in my Bow bi colour and in my tri colour. and cool white on all my white nav lights

I do wander if a shade/blanking plate between the 2 colored segments would help with the perceived sector overlap problem.

The main problem I have are the tugs in our harbour steaming backwards which I don't think is covered in the Col Regs at all
 
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Rogershaw said:
The main problem I have are the tugs in our harbour steaming backwards which I don't think is covered in the Col Regs at all
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Caledonian MacBrayne double ended ferries change the "bow" end every time they leave port, but yes, the IRPCS seems to miss reversing completely.
 
VicS said:
If you do a DIY job such as you suggest with the old Lucas lights how do you know the luminous intensity and hence visible range, of the finished article?
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I don't but they're a lot brighter than the originals! The cut off I can judge and that is equal to the original. A bonus point is that I can choose all or part which is a boon when battling reflection from the genoa (I guess you can achieve the same with a resistive feed to a filament lamp). As the genoa covers the lamp anyway, like most when heeled, the leeward light is invisible and I can switch to the tri.
 
jdc said:
imho there is little point saving much power for the low-down lights as usually one only uses them under engine or for short-ish times whereas that masthead tricolour is on all night, night-after-night if on an ocean passage, which is why the reduction in power offered by the LED is so tempting. But in that case what you've done - viz: to get one specifically designed for LEDs - is the right thing to do.
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I'm glad that you raised that point, it was also my thought.
On a similar vane, I can't understand why there are no reflectors behind bow and stern lights, at least, not on mine. I have put cooking foil behind mine, am I doing wrong?
 
LadyInBed said:
I can't understand why there are no reflectors behind bow and stern lights, at least, not on mine. I have put cooking foil behind mine, am I doing wrong?
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As above no point for leds as they only shine outwards anyway but unless very carefully formed as a part circle with the filament of an incandescent bulb at its centre a reflector will mess up the sharp cut off at the appropriate angle.
 
So, instead of buying coloured LEDs to go behind my coloured lenses, I could get warm white LEDs and then only carry one spare, instead of a spare of each colour, or aren't spares required as they are so long lived?

Cool white for the stern light (but the warm white spare would do as a spare).

I have a masthead tricolour, but what brought this on is the voltage drop on my engine panel gauge when I put the nav lights on in poor visibility. I was motoring so tricolour wasn't appropriate. Also I can't have the masthead tricolour on at the same time as the steaming light, which you shouldn't do anyway.

I'm going to have to investigate this as the more I think about it the weirder it seems, the voltage drop that is.
 
As I was agreeing that I could see no point in putting led's in bow and stern lights, why have G_W and Vic assumed that that is what I have put foil behind? :confused:
It's incandescents that emit light through 360° so without a reflector, surely light is being lost.
 
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LadyInBed said:
As I was agreeing that I could see no point in putting led's in bow and stern lights, why have G_W and Vic assumed that that is what I have put foil behind? :confused:
It's incandescents that emit light through 360° so without a reflector, surely light is being lost.
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We obviously both made the same mistake. Yes, there should be reflectors. My Lucas ones have stainless reflectors.
 
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