LED light conversion

[owen]

I have a number of 12 v flourescent lights in the boat. It seems a very simple and cheap job to convert to led strip light.I wonder if anyone has done this and is it worth while??

 

[Capt. Clueless]

Yes, I replaced old fluorescents with LED strips. Look nicer too and extremely simple. Much brighter too. Eterna do a kitchen strip you can just wire straight in. bish bosh.

 

[Moderator]

Buy caravan stuff. All the hard work will have been done, and they are EC compliant.

e.g.

https://www.atenlighting.co.uk/caravan-motorhome-lighting

 

[macd]

If your existing fittings are good quality, in good nick and you like them, it's certainly worth following Capt Clueless' advice. Note that the strips come with a variety of LEDs per metre and ratings per LED, which obviously varies the luminosity of the finished job. You'll also need to decide between cold white and warm white. No doubt plenty of U-tube vids describe the soldering/wiring process.

We did ours a couple of years ago in warm white. They give a brighter yet more agreeable light, using substantially less power.

 

[Sandyman]

Buy caravan stuff. All the hard work will have been done, and they are EC compliant.

e.g.

https://www.atenlighting.co.uk/caravan-motorhome-lighting

Ha ha not at those prices. Buy yourself a roll of LED's on ebay & make your own.
I had 8 Labcraft fluorescent fittings onboard. Easy little wiring job to convert them to LED
Cant tell they were ever anything but LED.

 

[rogerthebodger]

I have converted all my old fluorescent lights to LED.

You can use a combination of warm white for mood lighting. cold white when you need bright light and red for night lighting. I have even got red and white in the same fluorescent light in my cockpit with duel switches.

 

[owen]

Thanks for all the replies.
i have looked up a roll of 5m of led lights and connectors on ebay and it is <£10 it seems so easy to do i cannot see why I have not done it before

 

[GHA]

Led modules are good as well, no soldering required - just get some wago connectors off ebay at the same time

http://www.ebay.co.uk/bhp/led-module

 

[Tim Good]

Which Flouescent have you got at the moment? If the Lab Craft type you need to remove the circuit board before putting a like for like LED tube in. Easily done just need a soldering iron. There are some expensive types and inexpensive ones online. I tried them all. One company I found d actually did a warm white version which I put in the bedroom and the others I used the cheaper white light types from eBay. Both types are way brighter than the Floescent types.

 

[owen]

I wasnt planning on using the ready made led tube equivalents but the led on a roll with self adhesive backing as per the you tube video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAMPQrAu0aI

 

[laika]

Ha ha not at those prices. Buy yourself a roll of LED's on ebay & make your own.

+1. There was a bloke at the London boat show a couple of years back selling the exact same LEDs I'd bought from eBay for something like an 8x mark up. It's not an equivalent, it's the exact same product. I've had a bad experience with a UK seller of replacement LED festoon lights but never failed to receive items from china.

Check the specs before buying: sizes of the individual LEDs vary (5050 vs 3528) as do the number per metre. Also do your sums: There's a temptation to go crazy with LED strips but the power drain adds up. Not seen the modules GHA pointed to before but they look interesting. I note that you can now get ultra-high CRI led strips in a variety of temperatures if you're a lighting perfectionist...

Now one day I should write up my experiments with colour fading LED strips with an arduino, some MOSFETs and some "proprietary" NMEA-0183 sentences...(which can be done much, much easier with a cheapo chinese remote control thingy)

 

[PaulRainbow]

I wasnt planning on using the ready made led tube equivalents but the led on a roll with self adhesive backing as per the you tube video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAMPQrAu0aI

Easy to do. Rip the guts out of the old fitting and bin them. Cut LED strip to length, solder a couple of wires on and stick in the fitting.

Here's one i prepared earlier

 

[Tim Good]

I wasnt planning on using the ready made led tube equivalents but the led on a roll with self adhesive backing as per the you tube video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAMPQrAu0aI

See how you get on. If the result of one strip isn't a lot brighter than one Flo tube then you maybe best getting a proper led tube which can be fitted in place easily and swapped out easily too.

 

[PaulRainbow]

See how you get on. If the result of one strip isn't a lot brighter than one Flo tube then you maybe best getting a proper led tube which can be fitted in place easily and swapped out easily too.

One strip is brighter. If you want brighter still, stick two strips in, or three if there's room.

Easy to swap out. Pull old one out, stick new one in, job done.

 

[scottie]

I have converted all my old fluorescent lights to LED.

You can use a combination of warm white for mood lighting. cold white when you need bright light and red for night lighting. I have even got red and white in the same fluorescent light in my cockpit with duel switches.

Why do you fight over which colour to use?

 

[JimC]

See
http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?455437-Replacing-fluorescent-tube-with-LEDs&highlight=banggood
for a prticularly neat solution.

 

[Yngmar]

I've converted mine to red/white switched lighting. Pictures and more details here: http://www.bavariayacht.info/forum/index.php/topic,1301.0.html

 

[PetiteFleur]

Buy caravan stuff. All the hard work will have been done, and they are EC compliant.

e.g.

https://www.atenlighting.co.uk/caravan-motorhome-lighting

I've also used ATEN lighting and they are excellent, have some of the rigid strips on both our boat and motorhome. Very helpful company to deal with - we bought ours from their stand at a motorhome show where they had all the lights on display and will make up, on the spot, exactly what you want. Highly recommended.