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Mr B · 20-03-2020, 16:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by skipgundlach

The pic is nice, but links to your examples would be even better

Problem with that is it downloads the entire page, And that is its goobbly degook,
Im not good on the PC to make it readable,

But you can google it your self,
Ebay.com
Then type in, Under water lights,

Simi 60 · 20-03-2020, 16:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr B

Problem with that is it downloads the entire page, And that is its goobbly degook,
Im not good on the PC to make it readable,

But you can google it your self,
Ebay.com
Then type in, Under water lights,

Simple

https://www.ebay.com.au/p/28035074531?iid=312899473655

Mr B · 20-03-2020, 17:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Simi 60

Simple

https://www.ebay.com.au/p/28035074531?iid=312899473655

Its easy when you know how, Hahahahahaha

sailcrazy · 21-03-2020, 07:06

following

er9 · 21-03-2020, 08:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by wguinon

I changed all nav lites to Marine Beam leds. They are well designed and well priced. No problems in 5 years service.

that has not been my experience. their customer service was unhelpful, they re-sent me damaged/returned items that were useless and about 25% of the on/off switches in their lights were problematic or broken. and interestingly my negative review never made it to their website.

The lights that work are nice but they do not make them on site. I would dig further to find out who does.

Peeew · 21-03-2020, 08:36

I recently bought and installed a few led light strips from superbrightLEDs.com. So far they seem to work well and no interference noted yet. They have great tech help via phone or email which was useful.

Jetx · 21-03-2020, 12:26

Another plug for www.marinebeam.com. Have purchased a wide variety of bulbs from them for 3 different boats, many different varieties/form-factors, and all have been excellent. No IR interference noted from any of them.

They're also very familiar with all of the common "legacy" fixtures found on boats, and can give good advice about which retrofit bulbs will work best.

Nova Zembla · 21-03-2020, 14:30

As an international field service engineer specialised in marine electronics here's my 2cts on led strip lighting:

For inside cabin lighting the brand of led strip is really not that important. The thing that kills led strips on boats is voltage.
Most of the led strips out there are designed for 12 volts and 12 volts only. These strips consist of a certain number of led's and a resistor per length. They are meant to be used with an adapter plugged into a wall socket providing a stable 12 volts.

12 volts on a boat however is not 12 volts. Yes you run a 12 volt system, but in reality the voltage range will be anywhere between 11 to 15 volts. This varies depending on the state of charge of your batteries and wether or not your battery charger or engine alternator is supplying power to your batteries.

Running 12v led strips on 13-14 volts will work, but it will shorten the lifespan of the led's significantly.

In order to solve this consider installing an isolated DC-DC converter (Like victron's orion-tr series).
Such a device will take an input voltage between say 8 and 17 volts and give you a stable 12 volts at the output.
Extra advantage is that input and output are galvanically isolated meaning RF interference through the power supply is no longer an issue
(cheap pwm dimmers installed in the system will still give interference if placed near VHF though)
One DC-DC converter can run all the LED lighting on a medium sized boat.

As a bonus tip: waterproofing of led strip connectors and soldering can easily be achieved with clear nail polish.

Happy DIY-ing!

Lake-Effect · 21-03-2020, 15:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nova Zembla

Running 12v led strips on 13-14 volts will work, but it will shorten the lifespan of the led's significantly.

In order to solve this consider installing an isolated DC-DC converter

Welcome to CF, and thanks for the tips.

We are running our LED strips on a PWM dimmer, but of course the 'on's are at battery voltage. We're rarely charging when using the cabin lights, so that is never above about 12.8v. And we find that the dimmer around 50% is plenty bright. This is why ours are still fine, I believe.

I suppose one could also put one or two silicon rectifiers in series with the voltage for cabin lights (or individual strips), if the LED strips are still bright enough when the battery's low.

Have you observed LED lighting failing prematurely without obvious cause? My first set of DIY LED cabin and nav lights - about half died. Best reason I could come up with was static voltage from handling or nearby lightning. So in the next set, I incorporated a capacitor and a reverse-biased diode across each of the light fixtures, and none have died since.

Nova Zembla · 21-03-2020, 15:41

With my team I tend to a fleet of around 120 high end vessels around the world. On those I have seen numerous failed interior led strips without obvious cause.

As most of our boats run in excess of 120 ft of led strips in total it makes sense to put in a couple of dc-dc converters to safeguard all led lighting from over and undervoltage.

After we started installing these dc-dc converters I have rarely seen broken down led strips that could not be lead back to either some form of water or physical damage.

For the avid DIY-er with say a 30' boat it is quite simple and cheap to build some form of voltage protection for your led lighting offcourse!

David B · 23-03-2020, 18:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by aybabtme

I'm looking at installing LED strips for accent lighting under the settees and under other overhangs; replace all existing incandescent lights in the existing puck lights and reading lights, and replace the deck spreader lights.

I can find tons of online suppliers but it's hard to distinguish the crap from the good, and the overpriced from the fairly priced. Right now I'm eyeing SuperBrightLEDs but I don't know if their products are of quality or not.

Do you recommend a price efficient, quality source of LED products?

I have done exactly the same thing. Our saloon lighting was mostly LED anyway, but we wanted extra concealed lighting in the cabins and foot areas.

I just ordered via Ebay. The strips were on 5 metre reels - peel and stick. Where I felt the peel and stick may be an issue (such as where the end is terminated to cable) I used contact adhesive. The rest after a couple of years is still generally OK.

The ideal way is to thread the LED strip into a plastic or aluminium channel that is screwed up under the cabinetry, but finding the channel (as used by Beneteau) was too hard, and the peel and stick method is certainly a very easy installation.

I suggest you also get the inline dimmer modules. They are often offered with the reels of strip LED's. None of the strips I have installed are running at full power - we wanted soft ambient lighting, so 2 or 3 steps down from 100% provided that.

I need to get a video up on our channel showing the job (and the delighted face of my First Mate when I had the first demonstration). This virus lock-down may well be the opportunity to do the large amount of catching up I need to do!