Alternate Lighting

[boogiethecat]

Fred, they come on a 5 meter roll. The stuff is flexible and has 3M adhesive on the back... simple, just peel and stick.  At the end of the roll is a black and a red wire- hook to 12 volts DC and that's it.  If you can solder, you can cut the roll as short as 3 LEds and there are pads to solder (+) and (-) wires to every 3 LEds, so you can make it any length you need.  The proper resistors are part of the construction- the whole 5 meters is basically a multiple repetition of a 3 led circuit.
Very cool (pun intended)

[Tim Strommen]

Tim,

Are you saying the Audi R8 headlight is no brighter than a typical standard 60Watt incandescent bulb?

Lqtm they use more than one .

-T

[viento1]

My fluorescent tube (12Volt) messes with my amp meter. When the light is on it puts 520 amps into my battery bank obviously that is a little off but makes keeping track of my batteries tough. Anyone know what is up with that?

I have gone with the LED lights - I like the ones that have a warm color - easy on power too.

I just purchased LED puck lights from Walmart for $3 each. They use good old aa batteries and last forever, the best part is they have a light sensor - perfect for drawers. Whenever you open the drawer it senses light, turns on... bobs your uncle

[belfert]

I just changed all the lighting in my bus to "warm white" LED strips, 5 meters long, from ebay seller "ledclick".

These certainly aren't going to generate as much light as my four or five 20 watt flourescents.  Do these light up an area really brightly, or is it more of a dim light like maybe an airline cabin with the main lights off?

My passengers like to have a light on at night, but it can distract the driver.  We've worked around it, but I would like something less harsh for night driving.  Would these be a good option for lighting the passenger living area at night while driving?

How long to ship?

[boogiethecat]

They are, in my case, just as bright as fluorescents.  And MUCH nicer color temperature to the eye.  Actually, the two 10' strips I put in my bus are brighter than my two old 40 watt fluorescents. And those two strips consume 1.8 amps on 12 volts where the fluorescents took slightly over 6 amps!
- once I saw how bright they were and how little power they consumed,  I changed my whole shop to them and I couldnt be happier!
Given that you can use the cheap 12 volt dimmers that the seller has, mood lighting is super easy, just turn them down.

It took about a week for them to get here.  LEdclick is a good supplier and quite reliable.

Hint, don't use the "bright white" led's for your bus, they are very harsh white- they're great for a work area but not so good for a mood/living area.  Use the "warm whites" there...

Cheers
Boogie

[belfert]

Do the warm white LEDs look bluish like some of the CFLs?  I bought an outside liight for home and the CFL bulb in it certainly has a blue tint.

These LEDs sound like a great option for me, but will probably have to wait until next year for cost and time reasons.

[Fred Mc]

Boogie, are these the 5 m length with 600 led's?

Fred Mc.

[boogiethecat]

The warm white ones look very nice and not bluish at all.

The bright white ones I got were these
120470431565

The warm white ones I got had 300 leds per strip- it looks like the 600 led ones are just a lot brighter, because they have the same leds but draw more current than the 300 version

[Tim Strommen]

Do the warm white LEDs look bluish like some of the CFLs?  I bought an outside light for home and the CFL bulb in it certainly has a blue tint.

This depends on the way the LED is built (usually a phosphor over a blue or UV led) and the color temperature of the "white" - just being "white" isn't very specific...  Kind of like a nice lady saying it's "eggshell white" vs "snow white"... It's still "white" to me but yeah, it's a different shade.  Here is a link to a random lighting color temperature page I found through Google (so I'm not endorsing them or anything...), and it has a good example of the "Kelvin" color temperature of white.

A warm white is usually around 3500K, a neutral white is around 4200K, and a cool white is around 6500K.  For a stage-lighting or effect lighting, where light out put is very critical - a very cool (6000-7000K) light will flood a space with light (but it will probably be pretty harsh).  If you are doing a critical task like cooking and craft work, a bright neutral (4000-4200K) light will allow you to focus on the work rather than straining to see what you're doing.  For a mood lighting or soft lighting "after dinner conversation over coffee" - or "enough light to see who's in the room but not blinding like a GAP storefront..." , a warmer LED is typically more appropriate (2700-3500K).

Note that warmer lights usually have a better Color Rendering Index (CRI) than cooler lights, but the warmer lights usually don't put out as much light as the cooler lights - CRI is a rough way of explaining the relative ability for a person to tell apart different colors under the test-case lighting, using sunlight as a reference (100 CRI). As an example, one manufacturer quotes 65 CRI for 6500K @ 105 lumens, 80 CRI for 4000K @ 85 lumens and 90 CRI for 3000K @ 63 lumens - notice that there is less total light output for lower color temps, but lower CRI for higher color temps...

In the dome light of my pickup, I use four 3-watt warm LEDs from Lumileds, which are around 3500K and they look pretty darn close to the incandescent bulb's color I took out, but at a lower heat output and power draw .  No blue hue at all...

-T