HeyyyyyGord !! Yo Boy. Others listen up

[29cascadefixer]

Remember a while back I got ta whining about boat costs and how L.E.D.s were cheap except for boats. Guess what !!!! I found a great info site for do-it-yourself L.E.D. fixin !Check this out
http://www.dcwi.com/~nybarra/LED.html.
Man I love it when I can contribute some real stuff.

[GordMay]

Not Found
The requested URL /~nybarra/LED.html. was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

[29cascadefixer]

Okay ! Try this
http://www.dcwi.com/~nybarra/LED.html
YAY ! yay! Yay- It's alive,its' alive.

[Setia]

Good one cascadefixer, nothing like a good old winge every now & then. Tried your site but found it a bit complicated. A LED anchor light seems like a good idea to me. Would appreciate greatly if you could give me a simple design.
Regards, Setia/ Glen

[Pblais]

Hey CascadeFixer,

I went over the design with an Electrical Engineer friend and he says "dirt simple" and really cheap. He thinks it clearly will work very well. The links for the raceway product actually carries newer stuff than the original author had at the time he made his. The raceway would be the most expensive part, but for a good finished look i would think it's well worth it. They even make connectors these days that will make the job look even more professional.

[29cascadefixer]

Thanks for the comeback ,Folks. As I said above, these things for anchor lights seem to fill the bill. I'm looking into making one myself. Gord said in a lower thread that West Marine sells one for around 50 dollars. Thats not bad. The little amount of research I've done shows that maybe about 10 Superbright LEDs' at 2 dollars each, three resisters at probably five bucks total, and some ingenuity would give you an anchor light PLUS a trophy to show off to others so they could admire you The reading I've done gives estimates of 100,000 hours of life if properly powered. Soooo, lets see, figger 12 hours of burn time a day. 12 goes-in-ta 100,000=8333.3333 and so on. Round it off to 8,333 days. 365 days a year goes -in- ta 8,333 = 22.83 YEARS . I could live with that figger. I'll do some more research on these things. If nothing else comes of it, I've at least learned something new to keep me from going brain dead this Winter !

[Pblais]

I think the trick with the anchor light is more the package and wiring. While the LED's can last a really long time and use little power the wires and enclosure may not last as long as the LED's. The top of a mast is not a nice place to hang out for 22 years.

[29cascadefixer]

Lens would probably have to be glass, I think even the best acrylics turn milky in that high UV area. Something like a Mason Jar turned upside down would probably do it. Sealed at the bottom of course. A screw down jar lid type thingy would do as a mount for the light, plus furnishing a ready access to the innards.The wires would be okay inside the mast, properly strain reliefed so the weight of the conducters coupled with the mast swinging back and forth wouldn't cause work hardening. Maybe a power line conducter fastened to the outside of the mast would do. If it has to last several years through snow, ice, rain, sun and everything else a poor unappreciated powerline has to go through, a place where it would be loved and nurtured should be good .

[Pblais]

I'm not sure any "screw down jar lid type thingy" would last more than a year. perhaps it would be worth the extra money to adapt a real mast light fixture and just replace the inards.

[GordMay]

To get the most usefull light output, it's important to get the right lens type - matching the source (lamp).
Lighting Manufacturers design the lens (Prismatic, Fresnel, etc.) to work with the light source, and achieve the desired photometrics.
Just any old jam jar, ain't gonna give you the desired effect.
Regards,
Gord

[29cascadefixer]

I 'ma researchin' things that ARE SO KEWL. I learned that there are several different types of Fresnal ( pronounced Frunnal, by the way- why,I don't know- its' French) lenses. The lighthouses used a bullseye configuration lens that rotated . The bullseye type turned the light beam into a rod more or less. As it rotated, it produced the flashing effect. I think I will research the type of Fresnal lens that isn't a bullseye type. But also, these guys were dealing with old fashioned Gas, Kerosene, or electric sources of light. They were more spherical shaped as a light source. An LED can be very tight beamed right out of the box, so to speak. Sometimes only 20 degrees or so. If the LEDs were mounted figuring the upper part of the beam in a more or less horizontal configuration ( i.e. tipped downward on the horizontal axis 20 degrees)a longer field of view would exist on the water. Some of the more in-expensive anchor lights only use , at least at this point in my resaerch, a smooth polycarbonate lens. No light direction is apparent so far. I think in this instance, you could turn a ring of polycarbonate off the end of a piece of polycarbonate pipe the proper diameter in a lathe and use it as a lens. This is getting fascinating. I had to figure the Lumen output of an LED by using cosines. Did you know there is a site on the Internet that will give you the cosine of every angle . You know, all kidding aside, the Internet is a research source that is awe inspiring.
This is a subject I probably will really get my teeth into. I hope my quest is not boring to you folks. If it is, I will stop posting on this subject,and do " The Quest " in the privacy of my home, in a plain Brown wrapper

[CSY Man]

Not boring Mr. 29:

Good subject as the anchor light can be a major source of battery drain.....Especially if ya sail with me and forget to turn the thing off in the morning...

My bud bought one of them LED anchor lights recently and paid about $150.00 or so, burning 1/10 of the power he did before.

Anchored close to him one dark and stormy night to see if there was a difference, or less output than a regular anchorlight.

(After all, there is no free lunch...?)

I could only see a bit more "bluish" shine, but the strenght seemed to be average....Then again, we were anchored pretty close, 500 or 600 feet and that close there may not be a difference.
From a mile or two away the story may change.....Yet the purpose of an anchorlight is to present yer position at anchor and short range may be adequate unless the other guy is coming at really high speed and need early warning of yer presence.

Happens frequently here in Biscayne Bay in S.E. Florida.....To many drunk idiots in fast boats.

So, uh keep ut the good work Mr. 29 and keep us posted.

And if ya find any LED replacement for the high draw 25 watt, 12 Volt light bulbs in my cabin, at a reasonable price, let me know as I would buy a dozen in a flash. That is where the AMPs are-a flowing: Cooking dinner and eating inside we have 6 of them going at a time for several hours.
Then there is the stereo and of course the old fashioned anchor light, etc, etc.

[Troubledour]

I'm starting to think that cascade might just jizz hisself if he ever got ahold of something like the machinery's handbook.



Don't worry about those that are bored by learning, cascade ... they're boring.

Troubledour

[29cascadefixer]

I didn't know what bulbs ya had in your system, but check this site out. Scroll down through it, maybe you'll find what'cha want
http://www.theledlight.com/BargainBasement.html
Let me know if it helps !!

[29cascadefixer]

Like, who cares , right Got a few components together and gonna start to assemble them into ( hopefully) a circuit. I am trying to digest the info I downloaded on the internet and see if these things can be put together by a ham fisted 'ol mechanic. Let'cha know what happens later. It will be either purty or poof. We mechanics used to call when a circuit fries," Letting the smoke out of the wires" ! '