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Old 09-16-2019, 02:51 PM   #1
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LED Flicker w/ Webasto

Hello SMBers,

I have been trying to find a cure for a little issue. When ever the Webasto fires up or shuts off, my overhead LED lights flicker. After testing the voltage, it seems solid. The lights however notice the little fluctuation in voltage and flicker. Seems to not care if I am on battery alone or plugged in and charging. Wire size and connections are all solid and up to spec.


I have two vans that do this. One Econoline with 200 amps of Lithium and one Sprinter with 150 amps of AGM. Both with new batteries and such.


Any ideas?



Thanks

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Old 09-16-2019, 04:00 PM   #2
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Are you using a dimmer? I just converted the over counter lights to LED's, and the dimmer did weird stuff like flashing on and off, then staying off. I gave up and installed a switch, no more flashing or failure to light. Just a thought.
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Old 09-16-2019, 05:08 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by arctictraveller View Post
Are you using a dimmer? I just converted the over counter lights to LED's, and the dimmer did weird stuff like flashing on and off, then staying off. I gave up and installed a switch, no more flashing or failure to light. Just a thought.
The sprinter has a dimmer but the flicker happened before I installed that. The Econoline is just a switch at the moment.
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Old 09-16-2019, 07:08 PM   #4
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It would most likely be the LED lights themselves. If you are using ones that are normally behind a power supply. The tend to make sure that the filtering is done in the supply. You are probably getting some noise spikes associated with the turning on and off the heater. A water pump is also notorious for flickering led lights.

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Old 09-17-2019, 05:30 AM   #5
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If you are checking the voltage with a voltmeter, especially a digital volt meter, you won't see the variations that make "flicker". You need at least an old-school analog meter, or better an oscilloscope to see them. If your Webasto is like my Espar, the glowplug takes tens of amps when active, so there is a LOT of spiky current consumption on it.
You can minimize this by having the Webasto have a nice fat wire going directly to the house battery (through a dedicated fuse at the battery, of course), so that you have the least resistance, and the voltage drop to the Webasto isn't shared with the rest of the house systems. You *might* have luck with one of the very large capacitors from a car stereo place - you know, the capacitors the kidz with the Thunder-Thump3000 stereos use to try to get more phat bass[sic]. However, I haven't tried one, and when I run the numbers on stored energy vs. the energy demand of the heater it doesn't look good.
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