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Old 09-23-2010, 05:01 PM   #1
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LEDs

Though part of my new trailer build, I thought this would be more appropriate for general information.

We had replaced 3 of the bulbs with LEDs in our Sunline, at the time costing $12-19 a piece. A year later I was searching on EBAY and came across these LEDs bulb replacements for $1 to $2 depending on the vendor.

Go to EBay and type in G4 24 SM LED and they should come up.

The only disadvantage is they don't plug into bulb sockets. I simply hardwire them in and put a little velcro on the back,

You can't beat the price.
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Old 09-24-2010, 11:21 AM   #2
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thats a sick price....got any electrical specs?
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Old 09-24-2010, 01:35 PM   #3
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LED Specs
Base: G4
Pure white (Normal RV bulbs gtend towards yellow light instead of white)
24 3528 SMD LEDs
Input: 12V
Power: 2W (Compares to 24 watts for a normal RV Bulb)
Current: 160ma (Compares to 2 amps for a normal bulb)
Color temperature: 5500K
Life: more than 50,000 hours
Luminous flux: 90LM (Normal RV bulbs start at 100 LM)

To me the proof is in the visible light output. After it gets dark tonight I"ll do a comparison test and take and post some photos. I have previously done this with last year's LEDs.

In general I like LED light because the white light provides better page contrast when reading. The major side benefit is low cuurent draw. ^ regular RV bulbs draw 12 amps versus 1.2 for these babies.
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Old 09-24-2010, 03:30 PM   #4
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Another advantage of LEDs is that their light output varies very little with voltage while incandescent bulb output varies vivibly with voltage
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Old 09-24-2010, 06:35 PM   #5
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I found 2 sites with specs doing a Google search

10PCS/LOT G4 24 SMD LED Warm White/Pure White RV Camper Marine...USD34.49 Wholesale Price at DHgate.com

1: Type: G4 24SMD
2: Socket: G4
3: LED quantity: 24SMD Super Bright LED
4: Current: 160mA
5: Color: White/Warm White
6: Voltage: DC 12V
7: Power: 1.9W
8. Angle: 120°

G4 24 SMD LED Warm White RV Marine Light Bulb Lamp

Warm white
Base: G4
24 SMD LEDs
Life time: more than 50,000 hours
Input: 12V
Power: 1W
Color temperature: 3000K - 3300 K
Diameter: approx. 30mm
Luminous flux: 100LM
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Old 09-24-2010, 07:11 PM   #6
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If you go to EBay.com you'll find them for $1 without bidding. Shipping is $1.69 I bought 10 pieces. Though I don;t have all the pictures together, they seem as bright as previous LEDs for a lot less money.

I will say a strength and a weakness is that the light is more directed.
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Old 09-26-2010, 09:03 AM   #7
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LED/Incandescent Pictures

Though not great pictures, they provide a first order comparison of our incandescent lights versus the LEDs. Additionally if you want you can always double up the LEDs within a fixture with very little penalty.

Note that with LEDs you do not burnout the plastic cover lens that sometimes happens with incandescents. By the way both pictures were taken with out a cover lens.

The right hand picture is the incandescent, a little brighter and more yellow.
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File Type: jpg LED.jpg (50.3 KB, 6 views)
File Type: jpg Incandescent.jpg (50.0 KB, 4 views)
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Old 09-26-2010, 09:04 AM   #8
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The Incandescent is the bottom picture
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Old 09-26-2010, 10:20 AM   #9
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Norm, have you tried any of the G4 warm white LED's yet? I know you have a bit of a preference for the whiter white, but I am leaning the other way and wondered if anyone has tried them yet.
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Old 09-26-2010, 03:40 PM   #10
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Steve

Last year I bought one of each of the color range LEDs and honestly can not see much of a difference. I know what you mean about the yellow color, we're all use to seeing colors that are yellowed by our light.

Steve, my real preference is for the price. I plan to buy some more and will look for some that are more towards the yellow end of the spectrum and let you know. The only downside for the ebay orders is that they come from Hong Kong and take two weeks to get here.

We met a guy with an Oliver a couple of years ago. He had LEDs every where except over the food prep area, he was just used to seeing his food in yellow light. I wonder if our great grandkids will think it's strange that we lived in yellow light.

One aspect I did come to appreciate with the LEDs is their even output, when boondocking the intensity of incandescents decreases significantly with voltage drop and when connected, the intensity brightens appreciably when ever the converter goes into de-sulfate mode.

We originally only installed LED in the places that we used frequently, where incandescent bulbs would burn out quickly. Both of us quickly came to like them, particularly for reading. They are certainly appropriate in places like the grap handle light where color hardly matters.

Though I haven't investigated it I wonder if the power usage of LED based Flat panel TVs is less.
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Old 09-27-2010, 08:15 AM   #11
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Honda: LCD tvs are hogs, LCDs promise to be better (compared to CRTs)

At any rate - I got my package from 'LED4RV' - in which I tried a few sizes and colors. The 'porch light' and grab handle are white in 28 and 13 leds respectively. I put a 28 warm white bulb over the sink, a 13 warm in one of the bedroom reading lights and 2 20 led white bulbs in the main entry/over the table light controlled by the door switch.

In my preference, warm is far better than white - the white just seems weird and if you dont get it bright enuf, too gray. My shop lights for example are all now LEDs in bright white and thats ok, they do a great job under the hood but not for reading/etc.

I spent the weekend watching what switches we grabbed and based on that here is how my trailer is going to finish up:

the main lights will be 28LED warms, 2 bulbs in the fixture. you will be surprised how you depend on this light.

the over sink light will be the same.

the range light will be a 20led warm - I was surprised how often she used this when cooking.

the shower light will be 20warm, the bathroom mains twin 28s in warm.

the hallway will be twin 20's in warm, the bedroom roof twin 28's (it seems when you grab that switch you want it bright, vs the 13warms that will be in the reading lights) I will pul the twin 20 brights in the dining area readign lights since I paid for them.

the road light (aka drivers side scare light) and the propane light will be 28brights. it seems when you need em, you need em.

I figure I will be able to run every single light in the coach at the cost of 2 1141's, perhaps 2.5

BTW I tore into my converter (to wire up another 'lighter socket' for the bedroom dvd) and found it only charges the batteries at 3amps.

Since I am seriously getting into this 'boondocking' you would have to run a genset for most of a day to replace 50% depleted batteries.

short of wiring up 25-30w worth of solar panels (its coming) I bring one of my smart battery chargers. 2/6/10amp rates while running the genset allow for over 3x the charging rate (you can also use the 8amp or so battery option from most gensets, but I dont have a cable made for that.

My only large current draw items were the pump (7amp when running), the stove fan (when cooking), bath fan (when showering) and the heater far...I need to figure out what the heater fan draws.
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Old 09-27-2010, 09:26 AM   #12
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Quad Driver,

Thanks for the input on LED4RV. I do believe that one should buy one or two of each variety of LED and see what pleases you.

Our major electrical draw is the fridge, ours is an AC only. We have a 1200 watt inverter and with a single battery seem to be good for a day easily.

As to boondocking, we have the ability to charge our battery from the car when driving via a dash board switch I installed. (The switch with bright blue LED insures I don't leave the car battery on to the trailer with the engine off.) There is a diode in series with this charging line to prevent the trailer from charging the car when the engine is off..

With this situation a single battery has been adequate for our travels. In addition a year ago we built two solar panels (150 watts) for the roof of the Sunline that always kept the batteries charged, and for really far out travel, we sometimes carry a small 1200 watt generator.

I intend to add solar panels to the roof of the new trailer as well.

We rarely run the gas heater because the blower is too loud and actually have given away our gas heater from the Sunline. I believe the heater draws 3-4 amps. We intend to install a catalytic gas heater without blower in the rebuilt trailer and have electric in floor radiant heating when not boondocking.

Since we travel such a large part of the year, TV and computer/Internet are important. As to TVs and boondocking, we have two LCD TVs, neither with LED backlighting. I assume that LED Backlighting might use less power than traditional backlighting.

The first TV is a 15" LCD that we can run off a 75 watt inverter with ease. The second is a 26" LCD TV that draws 130 watts peak. Neither TV is an electrical burnden. We have Satallite TV, which also draws little power.

We carry two computers and a wireless router. My computer runs for 9 hours on battery and my wife's for three hours and neither is much of a current threat. As well we sometimes watch a movie on the computer via Netflix or DVD. I assume over the years that TV will continue to be more and more Internet sourced and the satellite connection will disappear.

Our peak electrical draw is the coffee pot (600 watts) but that only runs for 15 minutes in the morning. When Boondocking we sometimes run our electric blanket before we go to bed. We virtually never run any kind of heat at night other than our electric blanket.

The water pump, though a current hog rarely runs. For vent fans we've installed 12 volt computer fans that are relatively quiet and have low current draw.

Thanks again for LED4RV and safe travels to you.
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Old 09-28-2010, 09:15 PM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Collins View Post
Norm, have you tried any of the G4 warm white LED's yet? I know you have a bit of a preference for the whiter white, but I am leaning the other way and wondered if anyone has tried them yet.
Steve

I have the warm whites and prefer them except for reading. I took Norm's lead from last year and started to convert. Last year I bought some and now this year some more. About 1 more year and I'll have the entire inside converted.





The pad looking light is the one I most use in the ceiling lights. And Norm is right one needs about 100 lumens to be happy. They are part number WLED-WWHP10-DAC WLED-xHP10-DAC Specifications

I also found some 4 led ones that work well over the kitchen table pointing down. These work very well and do not blind you. They are part number
WLEDB-WHP4-DAC

4 High Power LED Disc Type Wedge Base Bulb Specifications

We have the LED spot lights now too for reading.

I am very pleased with the outcome.
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Old 10-01-2010, 09:34 AM   #14
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My LED order arrived (yesterday), it was placed monday night late and shipped form NC to PA in 3 days. I just got done installing - there is not one incandescent bulb in the coach!

One less worry when boondocking
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Old 10-14-2010, 08:30 PM   #15
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I bought a bunch from the company in China:
2 x White 36-LED Interior Dome Light Panel Square Flux | Virtual Village - US

They take a while to come in but they have all worked great. They have an adhesive patch in the back, you just stick them up inside the fixture. They are quite bright, and come with a wiring adapter for pretty much any kind of fixture you can imagine.

And note that the price is for 2.
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Old 03-09-2011, 01:05 PM   #16
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AFter looking around I thought I would ask here since posters seem more experienced with LCDs.

I have just replaced all the running lights on our camper with LCDs. I noticed they were polarity sensitive and was lucky I had the first few wired correctly before check this.

The question is are all LCDs polarity sensitive?

jim
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Old 03-09-2011, 02:26 PM   #17
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Jim,
Absolutely. LED stands for Light Emitting Diode. A diode is a solid state device, similar to a transistor, that only allows electricity to pass thorugh it in one direction. They are frequently used in electronic circuits to convert AC (or Alternating Current) into DC (or direct current).
An LED is simply a Diode that, when electricity is going through it - emits light.
But electricity will still only go one way - so the polarity has to be right.
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Old 03-09-2011, 02:39 PM   #18
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Yes, all discreet LEDs have a cathode and anode. tri-color LEDs dont care, but on a DC circuit will get one color only, unless both are red, in which case it aint tri-color and oh heck I am rambling.

anyways.....lol.......as long as you dont exceed the piv (peak inverse voltage) the LED will survive being hooked up backwards. Used to be you had to use a resistor to limit current flow (I have new unused LEDs from like 1980) but it seems the ones today are good to go, with a resistor on the wafer.

piv is TYPICALLY 50v, but check.

btw - it does not matter on AC as long as PIV is not exceeded, the diode will light 'half the time'
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Old 03-09-2011, 04:48 PM   #19
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Thank You gentlemen. The diode is like a one way check valve for current. I should have remembered that, duh! I was looking at some pictures of the wafers and their base did not look polarized.

jim
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Old 03-09-2011, 06:25 PM   #20
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someting else to remember on that trailer you LED'd, since LEDs are current limited, your turn signals may not flash correctly. standard old school flashers are thermal switches, the relatively high current of a couple 1157 bulbs trips them.

you know how it goes - add a trailer and the limit is hit sooner giving you that very fast flash with feeble light. burn a bulb (or goto leds) and the signals light up and stay lit....you need to find a relay flasher that cuts its own throat...at more cost of course.
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