Rewiring for all LED Lighting

[Secondwind410]

Hi there, hsi88, we went on eBay.com and pulled up the lights all different manufacturers, just make sure you check off the free shipping on the left side and china as area to buy from. then we just looked for the color of light we needed and the volt.watt from our old bulbs to find the right ones. we even bought index water lights that had a remote to change the color and used these down I. The bvi at night to see all the fish and just bought a cigarette 12v long cord from Canadian tire and wired the light to that and used our 12v socket to power the lights and voila, instant under water lights for about $12.99 each also from China, we could put them on the deck and shine them up the mast to light it up, super cool at night and you could change color too. just make sure you look at the lumens and color of the light, we really liked the bright white much better than the cool white as it was yellow in color not bright white. Good luck with your search

[jheldatksuedu]

concerning buying LEDs from China, it's somewhat of a crap shoot. I have bought many and got money back on many, they normally let you keep the junk. Lately I was buying LED 1157 automotive bulbs for my motorcycle, 2 for 2 was junk, the first one vibrated apart and quit, the second type I ordered had a tiny resistor that it used to switch from bright to dim, it was too small amperage and burned out, I was able to replace it with a larger resistor but got my money back also. An interesting thing about the first one that I still don't understand, when I hit my brakes when the headlight was not on, my headlight would do a quick flash routine. Voltage was feeding back through the tail light part of the bulb to the headlight circuit. Quite often you get what you pay for, so buyer beware, big time. Much of this stuff is made to just last long enough to get your money in the bank. With eBay it's not a problem to get your money back, but buyer beware if you do a purchase outside of eBay.

Not a big problem with a sailboat, but some of these could not stand the vibration of the motorcycle, and died that way.

[Nicholson58]

Originally Posted by pcmm

We've got an older boat with some really questionable wiring (mid 70's) most of the fixtures are shot so we've been looking around and LED lighting seems to have come down drastically in price! (down to $20-30 a fixture including LED's) question then is if I do the wire calc's I can easily wire multiple lights together and still end up with less than 1amp draw ( in fact with my current design I can turn on every light in the boat and only draw 3amps!!!).

Using 5% I can easily go with 18awg wire 100% of my runs. What are the drawbacks to using 18awg wire? I've heard that corrosion can be an issue, 18awg more fragile?

Major up side is lower materials cost across the board! wire costs less, connectors cost less, if you wanted to you could easily wire the entire cabin lighting loads to 1 or 2 breakers and not com close to their tripping loads. Its a real game changer for panel sizing.

We did the LED swap out from IMTRA and Marine Beam. A few others for special use - all PWM current regulated. I downsized the forward cabin wiring and it all fused in a lightening strike. In this regard, larger is better. Sometimes the wire needs to be sized NOT by the chart or actual power.

[PuttingDoctor]

Originally Posted by hamburking

Careful with the USB outlets. Most devices draw only 0.5 amps, but IPADS and IPAD mini's require 2amps!! This requires a high output USB port. I bought a bunch of these:



Black Universal Dual USB 12V in Car Charger Adapter for iPhone iPad iPod Samsung | eBay



Buy it at a store (in Canada) and you'll pay 10 times the ebay price.



Note that it has a 2.1amp port for ipads!

Actually correct but also not... The new iPad Air 2 requires 2.4 amps. any less and it will not charge.


Sent from my iPad using Cruisers Sailing Forum