On Sun, 15 Dec 2013 00:45:56 -0800, Gunner Asch
wrote:
On Sat, 14 Dec 2013 21:17:49 -0800, Larry Jaques
wrote:
On Sat, 14 Dec 2013 12:37:16 -0800, Gunner Asch
wrote:
On Thu, 12 Dec 2013 20:53:45 -0800, Larry Jaques
wrote:
On Thu, 12 Dec 2013 16:59:37 -0600, Jon Elson
wrote:
wrote:
Just as much work to install new fixtures for new style
bulbs. So I'll just put in LEDs and be done with it. I have never
been happy with other than incandescent lighting, the color of the
light has always been best. But the LEDs finally look great to me.
I built my own LED light a year ago for our laundry room/pantry,
which had a single recessed bulb that poorly lit the room.
I put 10 1 W LEDs on a piece of copper-clad PC board (as a heat sink)
and built a DC-DC converter power supply from a National Semi
reference circuit for one of their chips. it worked VERY well,
and is blazingly bright. It IS a bit harsh-blue, but is fine for
that room. Might not be optimum for the living room or
kitchen, though.
I bought the parts to do a 20-LED string for a tube fluorescent
retrofit, but haven't gotten around to it, yet.
I picked up a 1 meter long string of LEDs in plastic strip from eBay,
including a power supply with 2-prong 120v plug for $7.89 (delivered)
a while back. It uses 3528 LEDs. They work well and are cool and
inexpensive to run. Love 'em.
I'm really sold on LED tech. If the Chinese would get better power
supplies in their products, the Europeans and American's would likely
-never- sell another one of their extremely high-priced products.
At best, some of them are 50x overpriced. It's ridiculous.
Im looking to install LED lighting in my sailboats. Any suggestions
for best sources/pricing?
1 meter or longer runs.
I'm happy with this, but I didn't buy the waterproof style (but did
get a 120v p/s) 1M of 3528 chips for undercabinet use. $7.89 when I
bought them in June w/ free shipping. http://tinyurl.com/kra9yvz
Mine were in a rectangular plastic housing, like a rope light.
Another US vendor which has no housing:
http://tinyurl.com/mxlpv2f $5.99 delivered for a meter of lights.
http://tinyurl.com/ldy6ydt 5M for $13.88, smaller 3528 chips, dimmer
5M of 5050 chips for $19.88, brighter. Free shipping.
10M of 3528s for $15.99, free ship http://tinyurl.com/lmcf6eq
Buy a short length of each to see which brightness you need where,
then buy long strings of them and go crazy.
I dont need any waterproof styles..I just need some that will provide
decent lighting and any heat wont damage the fiberglass they are
attached to. This can be done with Epoxy or a heat gun, right?
I re-did my 40 ft. sloop with LED strips - epoxy circuit board stock
in about 30 in. lengths with a single row of LED. 12 VDC straight off
the battery bank. I used a couple of little high intensity LED bulbs
that fit a two pin fixture for me and Mother's reading lights. I left
the compass light and the navigation lights as they were because I
couldn't get an LED to fit the binnacle and at that time LED
navigation light bulbs were pretty expensive. Oh yes, and a 12 volt
florescent light over the Head mirror .
The strips were epoxy glued to a strip of hard wood and the hard wood
screwed to the overhead. There was no heat problems whatsoever.
We were living aboard and had an electric fridge and the change to
LED's changed my battery charging schedule from once a day to once in
two days with a pretty old battery bank.
--
Cheers,
John B.