LEd Lights

[AntarcticPilot]

>sidelights being better than a tri colour.

Not if you are in any decent sea, you disappear behind the waves. Also, and I have said this before, I have yet to see LED lights that come anywhere close in brightness and range to incandescent lights.

I use LEDs in both masthead tri-colour and in the main cabin. Both are FAR brighter than the filament bulbs they replace, and both take a fraction of the current. I don't know what LEDs you are looking at, but current ones are leagues better than filaments, provided the specification is correct. I've used UltraLED for the cabin lights, who answer questions pretty quickly about specifications and so on. The nice thing is that the current draw is so low that you can ensure the lumen output is as high as you like. Plastimo do a drop-in replacement LED bulb for my tri-colour. I can have my saloon brightly lit, enough for comfortable reading, all evening without worrying about running batteries down. Not so for filament bulbs, where using them for reading for an evening would make a serious dent in a 110 AH battery.

[mortehoe]

........... The nice thing is that the current draw is so low that you can ensure the lumen output is as high as you like. ......

output = what??? Lumen? Lux? Candella? ... but not Lumens!!!

LEDs are either unfocussed ~ 120 degrees or have lenses to focus the light, and eitherway the visible light output falls off rapidly according to the degree of focussing.

[AntarcticPilot]

output = what??? Lumen? Lux? Candella? ... but not Lumens!!!

LEDs are either unfocussed ~ 120 degrees or have lenses to focus the light, and eitherway the visible light output falls off rapidly according to the degree of focussing.

My mistake; light output is something I am not expert in, and I mis-remembered. Thanks for the correction. However, the figures are available on many web-sites; it is pretty easy to obtain LEDs that are drop-in replacements for standard bulbs, and there is no doubt whatsoever they are far brighter (albeit with a "colder" light) than filament bulbs of much higher power consumption. I don't mind the "cold " light as long as it's bright (you can get "warm" leds but at a cost on the brightness). The effect you note is countered by mounting several rows of LEDs at slightly different angles, to obtain an even spread of light. I presume they have 120 degree light output. With three light fittings with two LED bulbs in each, my saloon is brightly lit; the same fittings with filaments made it dingy and shadowy. I can read with the former; I couldn't (at least, not comfortably) with the latter. Perhaps I should note that my eyes are no longer in the pristine condition they were 40 years ago, and successive bouts of surgery mean that I find I need a good brightness to read comfortably. Before anyone gets worried, my distant vision is fine!

The tri-colour bulb of course has LEDs evenly distributed through 360 degrees, presumably with overlapping focussing except at sector boundaries. I can't be so definite about its brightness as I can with the cabin bulbs, but I certainly have the impression it is much brighter, with good sharp sector differentiation.

Only snag is that the things are expensive compared with filament bulbs - £5-£6 instead of a pound- but hopefully they'll last a lot longer.

[JimC]

I use LEDs in both masthead tri-colour and in the main cabin. Both are FAR brighter than the filament bulbs they replace, and both take a fraction of the current. I don't know what LEDs you are looking at, but current ones are leagues better than filaments, provided the specification is correct. I've used UltraLED for the cabin lights, who answer questions pretty quickly about specifications and so on. The nice thing is that the current draw is so low that you can ensure the lumen output is as high as you like. Plastimo do a drop-in replacement LED bulb for my tri-colour. I can have my saloon brightly lit, enough for comfortable reading, all evening without worrying about running batteries down. Not so for filament bulbs, where using them for reading for an evening would make a serious dent in a 110 AH battery.

What type of drop-in replacement LED bulb do you use in your tricolour? Is it one of these?
http://www.plastimo.com/catalogue/ca...gID=1&catid=11

[Roberto]

I'd be very cautious in replacing incandescent bulbs with led bulbs in navigation lights, to be honest I would not do it, but then it's just an opinion.

As an example, this is a sidelight with the original incandescent bulb



This is the same sidelight with a 40ish euro so-called type approved led cluster bulb



Yes, the above one is incandescent, the one below has a 20-30 led cluster.
I think this shows that depending on the optics-geometry of the lens of one particular lantern, there *may* or *may not* be a suitable replacement led, I'd personally be doubtful with "fits-it-all" solutions.

Also, I am absolutely no expert but people in the industry say that current lumen/watt ratio for leds can be 3 or 5 times the lumen/watt ratio for incandescent lights, which is in line with differences in consumption between incandescent bulbs and say Lopolight, Hella marine and the like (which come at their price); I personally tend to be a lot more suspicious when ten- or twentyfold differences in consumption are announced for 10quid bulbs.

Lumen for lumen, replacing and incandescent bulb with an halogen one reduces consumption by 30-50% for £3..


Just a thought :smile:

[dt4134]

I'd be interested in details of the LED bulb you used. Your photographs are completely at odds with my experience of fitting the bulbs last weekend.

Here is what I bought.

http://www.marinescene.co.uk/categor...placement-bulb

They are significantly larger than your LED bulb appears to be.

Other chandlers also sell them, it just happened that Marine Scene were the cheapest I found when I searched on the web. And the had an offer on delivery that tempted me into taking the risk of buying three. Unless I encounter unforseen problems in the next year or two I'd say I'm pretty satisfied. They claim they'll work for 50,000 hours of use.

[Blue5]

Rather sad I know but while walking around SIBS noticed quite a few New boats seem to be going over to LED nav lights

[JimC]

I'd be interested in details of the LED bulb you used. Your photographs are completely at odds with my experience of fitting the bulbs last weekend.

Here is what I bought.

http://www.marinescene.co.uk/categor...placement-bulb

They are significantly larger than your LED bulb appears to be.

Other chandlers also sell them, it just happened that Marine Scene were the cheapest I found when I searched on the web. And the had an offer on delivery that tempted me into taking the risk of buying three. Unless I encounter unforseen problems in the next year or two I'd say I'm pretty satisfied. They claim they'll work for 50,000 hours of use.

Your link points to five types of LED bulb: white, red, green, bicolour & tricolour. Which of these are you using? AntarticPilot seemed to be referring to an all-round white Led that gave good results in a tricolour lamp housing, have you experienced this? From my reading this seems to be an elusive goal for the LED makers.

[Roberto]

Unless I encounter unforseen problems in the next year or two I'd say I'm pretty satisfied.

Good! I think that's what counts in the end, if you are happy with your lights then so much the better :smile:


I'd just say that as leds are produced with technical characteristics (and related prices)going from 1 to 1000, and not knowing which type is used in the individual bulb (apart from a generic Ultra Super Bright Premium Extra Power Led), I guess there is plenty of room to be happy as there is to be unhappy.



To answer your question about the type of led of the pictures, those lights are not mine, I just copied the pictures of a rather unhappy customer which were posted here (first two messages),
http://www.hisse-et-oh.com/forum/ind...=544273&tab=bk

49.90 euro each replacement bulb, and it wasn't the first (nor the last) of a series of threads complaining about led bulbs.
Mind you, with a "49.90" price it shouldn't be too difficult to find which brand of led it was, I'll have a look..


cheers

[dt4134]

Your link points to five types of LED bulb: white, red, green, bicolour & tricolour. Which of these are you using? AntarticPilot seemed to be referring to an all-round white Led that gave good results in a tricolour lamp housing, have you experienced this? From my reading this seems to be an elusive goal for the LED makers.

I bought one white, one green & one red (for a vessel over 12m).

My first thoughts were to buy one as an experiment, but I ended up buying the three.

In each case the LED bulb colour matched the filter on the housing, so I've no experience of using a white LED through a coloured filter.

They brought the measured current for the three lights down from ~6A to 0.8A, so I certainly plan to buy another white for the anchor light when I get around to it. I'm still in two minds about the tricolour as I expect it'd take a bit of care to line up correctly.