LEd Lights

[ShaunG]

It has come to the time of year when the mast comes down and it seems wise to replace all my nav lights.

Now, in recent reports there seems to have been a bit of a theme with regards to sidelights being better than a tri colour.

With the advent of LED's and their low power what are your thoughts on ditching the tri colour and using sidelights and a sternlight in place. This would then leave just a 270 degree forward facing light up the mast for when motoring, i would still be much better of power wise thatn with a 25w incadesant bulb for the tri coulour. The regulations from what i can see state the a yacht may optionally use a combined device.

Have i understood the regs correctly.

Thoughts?

 

[dt4134]

I'm thinking the same way myself & will give it a try over the winter.

I'm a bit doubtful about fitting even one of the tricolour replacement bulbs accurately, but I'll replace the deck level lights & the anchor light.

Not concerned about the steaming light as there'll be enough current from the alternator to deal with a traditional bulb in that for now (and I'll have a few spares after replacing the others).

I prefer to use deck level lights anyway as I believe it gives deck officers a better chance of recognising what and where you are. A tricolour can sometimes be mistaken for a faint light on the horizon from the bridge of a ship.


PS the steaming light shines through 225degs (180 + 22.5 + 22.5).

 

[Roberto]

cost

apart from technical considerations, there is the personal choice of spending 2-3-400 euro for led lights versus decreasing power consumption, say, by a factor of 3 to 4

say a traditional tricolour 25w takes two amps, that is 20AH consumption during a 10hour night

replace the tricolour with the best leds with an approximate consumption of 5AH during the night, that gives a 15AH difference


put those 15AH on one side and the cost of leds on the other side of the balance...
fwiw I'd prefer spending those euro in improving the charging system, new batteries, etc , 15AH with a good alternator means 15minutes... but then it's a personal choice


just a thought :smile:

 

[ShaunG]

bugger, JCP you are right, bl000dy maths up the creek again.


most of lights are due replacement due to age, unreliability etc. I was going to treat the boat to a full new set, and if i am doing that then i was as well go with LED, probably Hella or if i am feeling extra flush then the lopolight.

like you i think that deck lights are easier to see, and not using a tricolour will save a bit of money on lights (about £300 for a tricolour from lopolight)

 

[dt4134]

I'm just looking at replacement bulbs. The cheapest I've found so far are £35 each at Marine Scene.

 

[KellysEye]

>sidelights being better than a tri colour.

Not if you are in any decent sea, you disappear behind the waves. Also, and I have said this before, I have yet to see LED lights that come anywhere close in brightness and range to incandescent lights.

 

[dt4134]

Interestingly enough I fitted the LED bulbs over the weekend. 25W replacements. The red & green were obviously brighter, even when viewed in daylight. At night there was no doubt they were much brighter.

I did have doubts about the white when viewing it in daylight. When I tried the comparison again in the dark the LED white was a bright bluey-white rather the yellow-white of the traditional bulb. It was much brighter than the traditional bulb in the dark.

I guess the blue shade made it stand out less in daylight, but I don't really care what they look like in bright sunlight.

 

[DJE]

I have yet to see LED lights that come anywhere close in brightness and range to incandescent lights.

Better look at these then and compare with old incandescent lights behind crazed and faded plastic lenses.

 

[huzar30]

I was in Kureessaare (Estonia) in the summer, and noticed they were using LEDs for the red and green lights on the harbour breakwaters. No doubt 'in the interest of saving the world'.

More interstingly, they had a new set of leading lights which were bright blue - exactly the same colour as the 'blues' on ambulances/police cars.

 

[graham]

Trinity house are using LED bulbs in Nav lights on buoys here in Britain.When I first saw one at night it was so much brighter I thought it was much closer than it really was.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

>sidelights being better than a tri colour.

Not if you are in any decent sea, you disappear behind the waves. Also, and I have said this before, I have yet to see LED lights that come anywhere close in brightness and range to incandescent lights.

I use LEDs in both masthead tri-colour and in the main cabin. Both are FAR brighter than the filament bulbs they replace, and both take a fraction of the current. I don't know what LEDs you are looking at, but current ones are leagues better than filaments, provided the specification is correct. I've used UltraLED for the cabin lights, who answer questions pretty quickly about specifications and so on. The nice thing is that the current draw is so low that you can ensure the lumen output is as high as you like. Plastimo do a drop-in replacement LED bulb for my tri-colour. I can have my saloon brightly lit, enough for comfortable reading, all evening without worrying about running batteries down. Not so for filament bulbs, where using them for reading for an evening would make a serious dent in a 110 AH battery.

 

[mortehoe]

What do you mean?

........... The nice thing is that the current draw is so low that you can ensure the lumen output is as high as you like. ......

output = what??? Lumen? Lux? Candella? ... but not Lumens!!!

LEDs are either unfocussed ~ 120 degrees or have lenses to focus the light, and eitherway the visible light output falls off rapidly according to the degree of focussing.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

output = what??? Lumen? Lux? Candella? ... but not Lumens!!!

LEDs are either unfocussed ~ 120 degrees or have lenses to focus the light, and eitherway the visible light output falls off rapidly according to the degree of focussing.

My mistake; light output is something I am not expert in, and I mis-remembered. Thanks for the correction. However, the figures are available on many web-sites; it is pretty easy to obtain LEDs that are drop-in replacements for standard bulbs, and there is no doubt whatsoever they are far brighter (albeit with a "colder" light) than filament bulbs of much higher power consumption. I don't mind the "cold " light as long as it's bright (you can get "warm" leds but at a cost on the brightness). The effect you note is countered by mounting several rows of LEDs at slightly different angles, to obtain an even spread of light. I presume they have 120 degree light output. With three light fittings with two LED bulbs in each, my saloon is brightly lit; the same fittings with filaments made it dingy and shadowy. I can read with the former; I couldn't (at least, not comfortably) with the latter. Perhaps I should note that my eyes are no longer in the pristine condition they were 40 years ago, and successive bouts of surgery mean that I find I need a good brightness to read comfortably. Before anyone gets worried, my distant vision is fine!

The tri-colour bulb of course has LEDs evenly distributed through 360 degrees, presumably with overlapping focussing except at sector boundaries. I can't be so definite about its brightness as I can with the cabin bulbs, but I certainly have the impression it is much brighter, with good sharp sector differentiation.

Only snag is that the things are expensive compared with filament bulbs - £5-£6 instead of a pound- but hopefully they'll last a lot longer.

 

[JimC]

I use LEDs in both masthead tri-colour and in the main cabin. Both are FAR brighter than the filament bulbs they replace, and both take a fraction of the current. I don't know what LEDs you are looking at, but current ones are leagues better than filaments, provided the specification is correct. I've used UltraLED for the cabin lights, who answer questions pretty quickly about specifications and so on. The nice thing is that the current draw is so low that you can ensure the lumen output is as high as you like. Plastimo do a drop-in replacement LED bulb for my tri-colour. I can have my saloon brightly lit, enough for comfortable reading, all evening without worrying about running batteries down. Not so for filament bulbs, where using them for reading for an evening would make a serious dent in a 110 AH battery.

What type of drop-in replacement LED bulb do you use in your tricolour? Is it one of these?
http://www.plastimo.com/catalogue/categories.php?LangID=1&catid=11

 

[Roberto]

I'd be very cautious in replacing incandescent bulbs with led bulbs in navigation lights, to be honest I would not do it, but then it's just an opinion.

As an example, this is a sidelight with the original incandescent bulb

This is the same sidelight with a 40ish euro so-called type approved led cluster bulb

Yes, the above one is incandescent, the one below has a 20-30 led cluster.
I think this shows that depending on the optics-geometry of the lens of one particular lantern, there *may* or *may not* be a suitable replacement led, I'd personally be doubtful with "fits-it-all" solutions.

Also, I am absolutely no expert but people in the industry say that current lumen/watt ratio for leds can be 3 or 5 times the lumen/watt ratio for incandescent lights, which is in line with differences in consumption between incandescent bulbs and say Lopolight, Hella marine and the like (which come at their price); I personally tend to be a lot more suspicious when ten- or twentyfold differences in consumption are announced for 10quid bulbs.

Lumen for lumen, replacing and incandescent bulb with an halogen one reduces consumption by 30-50% for £3..


Just a thought :smile:

 

[dt4134]

I'd be interested in details of the LED bulb you used. Your photographs are completely at odds with my experience of fitting the bulbs last weekend.

Here is what I bought.

http://www.marinescene.co.uk/category/635/bay15d-50-led-replacement-bulb

They are significantly larger than your LED bulb appears to be.

Other chandlers also sell them, it just happened that Marine Scene were the cheapest I found when I searched on the web. And the had an offer on delivery that tempted me into taking the risk of buying three. Unless I encounter unforseen problems in the next year or two I'd say I'm pretty satisfied. They claim they'll work for 50,000 hours of use.

 

[Blue5]

Rather sad I know but while walking around SIBS noticed quite a few New boats seem to be going over to LED nav lights

 

[JimC]

I'd be interested in details of the LED bulb you used. Your photographs are completely at odds with my experience of fitting the bulbs last weekend.

Here is what I bought.

http://www.marinescene.co.uk/category/635/bay15d-50-led-replacement-bulb

They are significantly larger than your LED bulb appears to be.

Other chandlers also sell them, it just happened that Marine Scene were the cheapest I found when I searched on the web. And the had an offer on delivery that tempted me into taking the risk of buying three. Unless I encounter unforseen problems in the next year or two I'd say I'm pretty satisfied. They claim they'll work for 50,000 hours of use.

Your link points to five types of LED bulb: white, red, green, bicolour & tricolour. Which of these are you using? AntarticPilot seemed to be referring to an all-round white Led that gave good results in a tricolour lamp housing, have you experienced this? From my reading this seems to be an elusive goal for the LED makers.

 

[Roberto]

Unless I encounter unforseen problems in the next year or two I'd say I'm pretty satisfied.

Good! I think that's what counts in the end, if you are happy with your lights then so much the better :smile:


I'd just say that as leds are produced with technical characteristics (and related prices)going from 1 to 1000, and not knowing which type is used in the individual bulb (apart from a generic Ultra Super Bright Premium Extra Power Led), I guess there is plenty of room to be happy as there is to be unhappy.



To answer your question about the type of led of the pictures, those lights are not mine, I just copied the pictures of a rather unhappy customer which were posted here (first two messages),
http://www.hisse-et-oh.com/forum/index.php?action=detail&id_message=544273&tab=bk

49.90 euro each replacement bulb, and it wasn't the first (nor the last) of a series of threads complaining about led bulbs.
Mind you, with a "49.90" price it shouldn't be too difficult to find which brand of led it was, I'll have a look..


cheers

 

[dt4134]

Your link points to five types of LED bulb: white, red, green, bicolour & tricolour. Which of these are you using? AntarticPilot seemed to be referring to an all-round white Led that gave good results in a tricolour lamp housing, have you experienced this? From my reading this seems to be an elusive goal for the LED makers.

I bought one white, one green & one red (for a vessel over 12m).

My first thoughts were to buy one as an experiment, but I ended up buying the three.

In each case the LED bulb colour matched the filter on the housing, so I've no experience of using a white LED through a coloured filter.

They brought the measured current for the three lights down from ~6A to 0.8A, so I certainly plan to buy another white for the anchor light when I get around to it. I'm still in two minds about the tricolour as I expect it'd take a bit of care to line up correctly.