LED Lighting Conversion

[Greggd]

Jage ,
You can remove your existing Ballast completely if desired ! These lights are made to basically plug and play tying directly into your SportsMobiles wired 12 volt feed . You can also if you so choose to leave the ballast in your light as their is plenty of room .
Greggd

[jage]

Ok, that's cool. Better idea than mine!

[BroncoHauler]

I did a ballast-ectomy on both my fluorescent fixtures when I converted to LED light strips. For no other reason than to clean things up. Just need to drill out 2 (aluminum) rivets per ballast if I recall correctly. There's a bit of thermal heat sink compound to wipe up, but that's about it.


Herb

[Gooseberry]

this post string has some good info in it.

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=4979

[ubergeek]

I thought I would share a conversion that i did. FYI, I am a bit obssessed with lighting in general. You can imagine my house has full of LEDs..
I chose to use the existing hardware in place in case I want to revert to the original setting. (very unlikely).
I have a spool of 5050 LEDs with 3M sticker on the back. I put two strips on the metal cover of the light fixture. It would hold 15 LEDs on each side effectively 45 LEDs as each 5050 LED has 3 tiny LEDs in it.
They are about 20-30 lumens per 5050, so the output should be close to 600-900 Lumens while only consuming 0.6A, or a bit over 7W. It's as bright as the stock fluo and has a better color. The cost is very cheap, as the spool of this (about 5 Meter/15ft) is ~$50.
I chose warm color at 3000K.

1. Remove the plastic cover
2. Remove the metal cover
3. Unpluck a connector from the switch that goes to the blaster. Tape the end of the connector as you won’t use it unless you want both LED and Flo on.
4. Stick two LED strips on the metal cover.
5. Crimp on a female connector and connect to the switch.
6. Splice another wire coming from the ceiling, and connect to the other LED strip.

If you want, you can leave all the wires there so both LED/Flo will be turned on. Or you can add another switch to control them separately. As I perform this sort of mod, I will try to take more pictures so that I can share with you folks.
Thanks.

[jwintersteller]

I started converting my lights to LEDs. I'm basically doing what most of you are doing but with some different securing devices.

First I replaced the incandescent interior lights. I really liked the clips that jage used but I don't have a Costco card so I couldn't go buy apple juice by the gallon, besides I saw farther down the thread that he was having a little trouble with them popping out on occasion. I also liked what he did with the stainless steel wire and I just happened to have some so I combined the ideas and came up with these little clips.





The next thing I did that was slightly different was the outside light. I also doubled up on the boards but unlike NRL I put a second socket in the fixture. I thought there was some warning on the superbrightleds website that said that you could not combine the boards because the diver circuitry was in the base. But I just saw that NRL did it so it clearly does work. Well at least this way, if one goes bad on me I will still have some light.




I used the stainless steel wire in this fixture also. Some how it turned out looking like I stole some kids retainer but ones the boards were put in place it looked quite clean.




I am a bit worried about water getting into the fixture and ruining the LEDs. Has any one had problems with this? Idid put some extra silicon where the fixture contacts the van body but water can still easily get in where the lens and base come together.

By the way, I want to thank John & Dana for taking the guesswork out of ordering the LEDs and everyone else for all the great install ideas.

[jage]

Originally Posted by jwintersteller

I am a bit worried about water getting into the fixture and ruining the LEDs. Has any one had problems with this? Idid put some extra silicon where the fixture contacts the van body but water can still easily get in where the lens and base come together.

I have 3 LED panels stuffed in my outside light, one is the same one you used and two other "dome light" replacement boards. In addition the top plastic of both the housing and the lens melted from the incandescent, leaving a 1/4" gap across the top- which I discovered when I did my own 1st LED round. I've been meaning to patch/repair/replace ever since, due to the same water concerns- but so far no issues have been encountered.

[jwintersteller]

Thanks jage, My housing was also warped but not as bad as yours, I only have a 1/16" gap about 1" across the top. But that is still enough to let water in. I'll be keeping my eyes on it.
By the way, with the two boards installed the outside light is so much brighter then before and with it on the volt meter shows only .01 drop or no drop at all. Very happy with that

[joey2cool]

LED lighting has come a long way and it keeps getting better (cheaper, more options, and brighter).

Purchased a direct replacement bulb for the SMB bullet fixtures from my local RV dealer. At $19 each it's still a little pricey, but this 19 diode LED bulb is worth it to me for 0.1 vice 1.5 amp-hour power savings, 100x longer life, and eliminated melt-down worries from heat. I like the light better too. This one is 135 lumen daylight white 5500 Kelvin from http://www.ddoem.com.

[photo][/photo]

[photo][/photo]

Also found a patented 360 degree swivel base Revolution LED direct bulb replacement for the porch light. Starlight Inc (http://www.starlightsinc.com) makes this bulb in 100, 200, and 300 lumen options. It's built for outdoors and cost $25 from my RV dealer. The draw is 0.2 amp-hours for 200 lumens of cool bright light at 6500 Kelvin.

[photo][/photo]

Still can't bring myself to fork over $50 each for flourescent fixture LED bulb replacements. At only double the life span and 1/2 the power savings it doesn't justify hasseling with the wiring job - even if it is just a couple wires and no need to remove the ballast (see Starlights Inc. web page link above). I'm thinking about putting in the extra switch for hi-lo control of these fixtures, and getting a couple black light flourescent bulbs at $12 ea.

[jwintersteller]

I finally finished my florescent light conversion. It's basically the same as ubergeek's but instead of just leaving the florescent parts in tacked to maybe hookup again later, I installed a "on/on" switch that gives me the ability to go from LED to florescent just by flipping this switch. The main reason I did this was that I have had some of my LED lights go out on me, I thought this would be a cheap backup.









Thanks to ubergeek for hooking me up with the cheap string of LEDs
John