LED Bulb Replacement

[Steve L.]

For boondocking, I use a 36 LED bulb replacement over the sink and another over one of the dinette seats. Just plugs into the 1156 socket base and lays against the difuser. For basically .1 amp per fixture I have scads of light. Not enough to read by but more than adequate for general tasks.

LED Bulbs

I must have bought at least one of practically everything on the above site. I don't know if I'm bragging or embarassed.

[Larry B]

Steve
do they put out as much as regular lights?
I don't think regular 12 volt lights are much to write home about.
I have a 120 flouresent that I hang over the table in my scamp it works much better than 12 volt. just wondering.

[Steve L.]

Not these. Others are better but are more focused but then you need a fixture in a good location. These are fairly wide angle and difuse. Better for ambient lighting, making a sandwich, washing dishes, fishing through a bag looking for something etc.

[Brian B-P]

Originally posted by Larry B@Nov 16 2005, 11:20 AM
...I have a 120 flouresent that I hang over the table in my scamp it works much better than 12 volt...

While I can certainly believe that a 120 VAC fluorescent fixture provides much better light than the same wattage 12 VDC regular bulb, a 12 VDC fluorescent would likely be just as good, if not even better. The electronic power supplies used in products such as Thin-Lite to handle the low voltage DC supply are better than the crude ballasts in typical household fluorescent fixtures.

So far, I have only replaced the original ceiling-mounted dual bulb fixture with a 15 W Thin-Lite, and I certainly prefer the fluorescent

[Rob S.]

What about Cold Cathode lights? I just ordered a dual 12" cold cathode kit and will retrofit a regular fixture with them. The specs indicate that the dual CCL only draws .5 mA. I'll keep you all posted on how it ends up.

Rob

[Steve L.]

I bought one of those too. A pricey marine light. The plus is that it swivels. I would intall it over the center of the dinette table so that I could turn it towards either seat. For the moment I didn't want to drill any holes. I'll be interested to hear if you think you can read without too much eye strain.

I use an LED head lamp for reading. I guess I don't mind being geeky, but looking geeky is a little harder to accept. Plus, there's headlamp hair. Never can tell when that fabulous babe will stumble into the camp ground and be hopelessly attracted to the little egg. Besides, things look bigger in a small egg. So to speak. Don't know exactly what I'm talking about here. Better stop.

[Brian B-P]

Originally posted by Rob S.@Nov 17 2005, 02:11 PM
...I just ordered a dual 12" cold cathode kit ...

I like the idea of the cold cathode design, for efficiency, durability, and potentially low-termperature performance. The cheap cold cathode fluorescents are normally very low power (meaning not very bright) and are intended primarily for decoration; however, a member of this forum used a kit to build a fixture for this trailer which apparently worked well. Unfortunately, the website for the supplier, EL Wire Cheap, gives no light output specs, and they never responded to my e-mail request for information

Originally posted by steve L.@Nov 17 2005, 03:09 PM
I bought one of those too. A pricey marine light. The plus is that it swivels...

I'm guessing that this is the Taylorbrite reading light from Taylor Made (see their Taylor Made Technologies group), available from marine suppliers (e.g. West Marine). This is quite different from the cheap kits, and I would have bought one if there was a local supplier - I would hate to commit to buying one without seeing it working. I would be very interested in hearing how well this works, such as in comparison to a 20W halogen light.