LED lighting in Casita

[lonlawrence]

I ordered one Warm White (92 lumens) and one Cool White (120 lumens) "bulb" (actually bulb base connected to printed circuit board with LEDs on it) from SuperBrightLeds.com and tried them out in the camper. The Cool White really puts out the light, but it's too harsh. So I ordered all Warm White "bulbs" for the camper and put two Cool White ones on the outside lights. As you can see by the pics on my website, the interior is lit up beautifully at night with LEDs. When turning on the factory incandescent bulbs in the camper, with just two lights on the battery voltage dropped 1/10 volt, another light would drop it another 10th, etc. With all 7 interior lights on, the voltage would drop almost immediately half a volt, and in a few minutes it would drop a full volt. With the LEDs I can turn all the lights on, inside and out, (a total of 10 lights) and the voltage doesn't drop at all. NOw I can stay up half the night with all the lights on and still have enough battery power to run the furnace all night. See my latest mod on the my website and click on "Led Lighting." You can click on the pictures to enlarge them and you can download them.

http://web.me.com/dr.pepper007/Site/Casita...asita_Mods.html

[Steve L.]

I've had good luck with those LEDs from SuperBright. The ones that look like little printed circuits are much more robust than the ones that look like little plastic bulbs. Although I prefer the cool whites as I find them easier to read by. I agree that they are a little harsh.

Although I haven't had much luck getting the velcro to hold them in place inside the fixture. I probably should have cleaned the surface some. None the less, they run cool and they just sit on the plastic cover without problems.

[Ken J]

I also have those same lights - a bit pricy, but worth it - they are not as bright as 1156 bulbs, but you can run 5 Led's to one 1156

Ken J.

[Scott S.]

one more project for spring. I'll be able to go the entire summer without charging the battery. thanks for the link.

[April Wilcox]

LED's are the way to go!! We found some warm white rope lights that were designed for decorating a car, and installed them under the upper cabinet over our sink. We also plan to add a few of the LED puck shaped lights around the inside, eventually. I think a mix of cool and warm white will do nicely as I like the extra brightness of the cool white, but they can be hard on the eyes after a while. It would be cool to mix them together in a single fixture if that is possible, I don't know much about actually wire them so I don't know how that would work out, but it seems like a good idea in theory to blend the two together to balance the lighting out.

[Jake Jacobson]

I've been thinking about ordering some of those for awhile. Glad to see they work so well.

[Parker Buckley]

one more project for spring. I'll be able to go the entire summer without charging the battery. thanks for the link.

As good as you all make these LEDs sound, I'm worried that my battery may have to be serviced sometimes just to let the extra volts out!

Parker

[Greg A]

We went all LED and Cold Cathode lighting in our 81 Scamp redo over a year ago. We can go 10-14 days easily without recharging on normal lighting use and including running the water pump periodically. We added a 15W briefcase solar unit off eBay and were off the grid in Yellowstone this summer for a week with only the briefcase solar out all day and the battery never dropped below 12.6 volts the entire week. The external trailer lights were replaced with all LED as well.

[Mike Magee]

I've had good luck with those LEDs from SuperBright. The ones that look like little printed circuits are much more robust than the ones that look like little plastic bulbs. Although I prefer the cool whites as I find them easier to read by. I agree that they are a little harsh.

Although I haven't had much luck getting the velcro to hold them in place inside the fixture. I probably should have cleaned the surface some. None the less, they run cool and they just sit on the plastic cover without problems.

You mean, the LEDs aren't retained by the socket, rather they dangle against the fixture? That sounds less than optimal for their longevity if they're going to be subjected to motion stress all the time during travel. Please elaborate.

[peterh]

Here's my take on LED lights and the cost and battery life trade-offs.

Whether or not LED lights are a good deal depends on how you use your trailer. If you're a hookups-only kinda person (or people), LEDs make no sense at all. At $10-$35 a bulb they're just too pricey.

If, on the other hand, you do a lot of dry-camping and depend on solar panels to supply your electricity, LED lights are a near necessity, and here's why: A used 55 watt solar panel costs around $280 on eBay and provides about 27 amp-hours of electricity, the exact amount of electricity required to run four regular RV light bulbs for 4-1/2 hours. In other words, you have to watch how many lights you turn on and how long you use them very carefully or you'll use up all the electricity your $280 solar panel makes in a day on just those four light bulbs and have nothing left over to run other nicities like your water pump or forced-air furnace.

Now consider your standard $20 two-watt LED flat panel. They put out the same amount (sometimes more) of usable light as a regular light bulb, but use just 1/9th the electricity of a regular RV light bulb. That means spending $80 to replace your four most heavily used regular bulbs with LED flat-panel lights allows you to leave those four lights on for nine hours each night and still use just 4 of the 27 amp-hours your solar panel generated. That $80 in LEDs saved you from having to buy a second $280 solar panel. (And from needing a second deep-cycle battery to store the solar panel's elecricity in, too.)

If you don't have solar panels and depend on battery power LED lights become even more valuable. For $80, the cost of a single deep-cycle battery, you can buy four LEDs and extend the length of your stay by several days without buying that second battery.

[Glenn Baglo]

I'm reading all of this with interest, but, in 30 years of camping, I generally sit by the fire, if we can be bothered to make one, and go to bed when it gets dark.

Probably that's because I didn't have electric lights in the tent trailer. We'd generally light a Coleman lamp for maybe an hour at bedtime, as much to take the chill off as for the light.

Now that I have Toad, with all the amenities, I'm going to have to monitor my usage before investing in solar panels, LED lights and batteries. I'm just not sure I need any of that stuff when I can just go to sleep or sit outside and marvel at the night sky.

baglo

[Harry Young]

The question I have for everyone because I am considering this move next on my rig is this "How do the bugs act with this kind of lighting?" "Do they respond to it like the old florescent style lamps being attracted to it or is it more like incandescent lamps?" "On outside lighting does the yellow diffuser still work to lower bug attractions to the light with L.E.D.s"
Harry

[Roy in TO]

Good question Harry!

We've used white LED lighting in our kitchen tent with out noticable bugs buzzing around. Maybe that is because I leave the propane light on a pole outside. Never really thought about it until you asked. I've seen Steve L's lights and agree with the others on the harshness of the cool white.

I work under bright lights most the day and seem more sensitive than others to harsh glares. For that reason I've decided to use the cool white only over the sink/stove area and warm white under the end cabinets. I was tossed on what to use for the porch light till I read your post. Since we have a clear lens, I'll go with the warm white there too.

[Pete Dumbleton]

As with many other appliances, what you do depends greatly on YOUR camping style. Personally, I like to read in bed, and as a FullTimer I rarely made campfires, so the lights were important to me.

BTW, I have read that the bugs aren't actually attracted to the lights -- What's happening is that they navigate by the light from stars or the moon, always keeping one side pointing at that distant light -- When we introduce a closer light, they start flying in circles around the light, eventually getting to it and being very confused.

http://archives.stupidquestion.net/sq72601.html

The above suggests that the lower a light is towards the ground, the fewer bugs will be fooled by it.

[Harry Young]

Thanks Roy and Pete for the replies, the link was very interesting, I am concerned about mosquitoes mostly...I saw a Coleman mosquito trap designed to trap the little devils in camp and it appeared to have L.E.Ds. as bait and a hormone packet, it stated the lights attracted them into the trap where they were zapped...I live in Arizona, the out break of west nile has hit us hard every monsoon season for a few years now...I try to be cautious camping and generally use the gas lamp in the cabin which seems to work well for me but is warm on summer nights although it is deadly if a stray gets two near the mantle...I set a gas lamp just on the edge of camp so the insects home in on it to be safe just as was suggested...I had read once that mosquitoes were infra red heat seekers and wondered what was the emitted spectrum an l.e.d. put out?
Or if a different color l.e.d. was invisible to them. New technologies are wonderful and I am curious what the group experiences were with these lights...I will defiantly try the soft whites.

Again thanks for taking time out to reply.

Harry

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[Doug Mager]

One thing I have learned diddling with LED lights over these past few months is the fact that they do grow DIMMER as they age, and I'm talkin about every day usage and turned on for 6/8 hours at at a time, so r/v usage may vary somewhat.

Regular (incan.) bulbs WILL last considerably longer under similar usage.

[peterh]

Well . . . yes and no.

One thing I have learned diddling with LED lights over these past few months is the fact that they do grow DIMMER as they age, and I'm talkin about every day usage and turned on for 6/8 hours at at a time, so r/v usage may vary somewhat.

Regular (incan.) bulbs WILL last considerably longer under similar usage.

Here's the poop on LEDs and lifetime. If used in the right voltage range a set of LEDs should last many, many thousands of hours, but the bulb's life (and brightness) will decline rapidly if you exceed that range. Here's why:

LEDs are a special type of diode, a device that is very good at allowing electricity to pass through in one direction, but not the other. You can think of it as a very thin wire with a one-way valve in it, if you like, one that glows when it lets electricity through.

I said very thin wire, didn't I? And thin wires can't carry a whole lot of electricity through them, can they? So here's the problem: as the voltage applied to the diode goes up, it tries to let more and more electricity through. That makes the LED glow brighter, but it also makes the LED get hotter, too.

And that's the basic problem: by the time the LED starts visibly glowing, you're already getting very close to the LED's voltage and current limit. Apply just a little more voltage to the LED, and it gets warm enough that that the heat damages parts of the bimetal conductor inside the LED, reducing the amount of electricity that can pass through and the amount of light the LED makes.

Most of the LEDs I use are designed to operate at 12 volts, plus or minus a small amount. Problem is, most of our trailers have converters or battery chargers that often juice up the battery at 14.5 volts, sometimes more.

14.5 volts is way more than the LEDs I buy can handle, so I install a 12 volt voltage regulator in all my LED light circuits to prevent them from being damaged when I'm at a full hookup site. That way they'll last for the 50,000 hours they're supposed to.

(Some LEDs come with regulator circuits built in, by the way, but most do not.)

(Edited to correct some factual errors I let slip through. I tried to over-simplify some things and presented my information incorrectly. Thanks to Brian for pointing that out. )

[Pete Dumbleton]

Skeeters also home in on the carbon dioxide that mammals exhale...

[HerseyBA]

Most of the LEDs I use are designed to operate at 12 volts, plus or minus a small amount. Problem is, most of our trailers have converters or battery chargers that often juice up the battery at 14.5 volts, sometimes more.

14.5 volts is way more than the LEDs I buy can handle, so I install a 12 volt voltage regulator in all my LED light circuits to prevent them from being damaged when I'm at a full hookup site. That way they'll last for the 50,000 hours they're supposed to.

(Some LEDs come with regulator circuits built in, by the way, but most do not.)

Could you elaborate on the voltage regulators that you used? Also do you know which LEDs come with built in regulators? I have all Superbright LEDs. Stores that handle electronics parts come few and far between down here. Radio Shack has been a joke for years so I have to order via the internet and would appreciate some guidance.
Thanks

[lonlawrence]

You mean, the LEDs aren't retained by the socket, rather they dangle against the fixture? That sounds less than optimal for their longevity if they're going to be subjected to motion stress all the time during travel. Please elaborate.

Michael,
Most of us attach the PC board to the top of the fixture with that sticky stuff (like silly putty) that you use to stick stuff on walls. One brand is DAP.. it comes in blue and yellow and you can get it walmart and online. Velcro might work if you clean the surface real well before attaching it. They don't "dangle" at all nor do they have to lay on the bottom of the lens. Don't forget to replace your lenses with the clear ones as the translucent ones that come in the Casita don't let enough light through.

After reading the discussions of trying to justify paying that much for LED lights (yes, they are expensive at $22 each at SuperbrightLeds.com), everyone is right. It's not a mod for everybody. For those of us that don't go to bed until late, stay up and watch TV or read and like to have the camper lit up, it's a great mod. Especially if you plan on running the furnace all night. I can attest to the fact that if you run your incandescent bulbs for four hours, you won't be able to run the furnace all night. That darned furnace fan draws a lot of current. I wish someone would come up with a real RV vented radiant gas heater to replace these forced-air furnaces like my old Diamond Class "C" motorhome had. However, if you go to bed at dark, don't invest in the LED lights. Some people wondered about the LEDs drawing flying insects. Yes, they will, the frequency they operate on has no affect. A light is a light to flying bug, and yes, it's the carbon dioxide you give off that attracts mosquitos. If you put an amber lens on your outside light with a cool white or warm white LED behind it, it acts just like an amber lens with an incandescent bulb behind it. Most people find it cuts down on the bugs, but it doesn't eliminate them.