On 3 Aug 2012 01:12:23 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

On 2012-08-02, Spehro Pefhany wrote:
On Thu, 2 Aug 2012 09:27:45 -0700, the renowned "Steve B"
wrote:

I have some LED pole lights coming for my boat. They are for inside the
boat for when we are fishing, and want a dim light. They come hard wired.
Could I put them on a rheostat so that I could dim them down?

Steve


Buy an electronic control from China on eBay. Costs just about
nothing.

But he wants to run it from DC on the boat, not 60 Hz AC, so I
think that the light dimmers (if that is what you are suggesting) won't
work without first converting to AC.

Enjoy,
DoN.

A great many of those 12 VDC lights are just series circuits made up
of LED's and resisters. Try a resister in series with one side of the
circuit. It may well dim your lights. If that works you can replaced
the resister with a variable resister (potentiometer, rheostat,
whatever) for finer control.
Cheers,
John B.