# Beware of LEDs!



## Zebedee (Oct 3, 2007)

Easy to assume that LEDs consume almost no power, but beware of the long "_christmas decoration_" strip lights!

Our van has three long strips as main lighting, and they give a very good light, but according to the Sargent panel they run at 4.2 amps!! 8O 8O

I don't know how accurate the panel is, but I expect it's pretty good. If Ian notices this he may add a comment.  

Just a "heads up" for anyone who made the same assumption as me . . . _*before counting the SMDs*_. There's hundreds of 'em, so no wonder they are a bit power hungry!! :roll:

Dave


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## UncleNorm (May 1, 2005)

Well said Dave!!

We have 2 lengths of 'rope' light which I took to be a series of LEDs. They provide wonderfully soft 'mood' lighting and also light the top lockers, but mine run at up to _*SEVEN *_amps. 8O   The batteries don't like them one little bit!! As a rule, we don't use them.

When we're on a Caravan Club site, we put the whole lot on!!


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## Telbell (May 1, 2005)

Erm...what's an SMD?? :roll:


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## bigbazza (Mar 6, 2008)

I think they are "surface mount diodes"


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## Telbell (May 1, 2005)

Ah- like on my new spotlight LED's (MR16 I think) I have 12 little orange squares- these are the diodes? and are therefore small and surface-mounted?


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## Zebedee (Oct 3, 2007)

Telbell said:


> . . . I have 12 little orange squares- these are the diodes? and are therefore small and surface-mounted?


I've got dozens - so there! :wink: :lol: :lol: :lol:

They are the SMDs (surface mounted diodes as Bazza said  ), and with only 12 you should find they don't use too much juice.

SMDs are far brighter than the older type, but you don't get something for nothing I guess, especially when you have dozens of them!! 8O :lol:

Dave


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## Telbell (May 1, 2005)

Thanks Dave & Bazza! :lol: 

Must admit we're pleased with ours from Campercare Uk (thanks Nigel!)- much better light than when we first tried them a few years back.


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## PeterandLinda (Feb 21, 2009)

Hi

We have just replaced our 21w flourescent kitchen light with two 50cm LED strips. They are rated at 300mA each. If my sums are correct, and ignoring losses, this makes them about three times more efficient at 7.2w and they give a much better light.

P&L


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## zulurita (May 9, 2005)

Thanks for the info, I don't tend to use the long strip lights in the Auto-trail, they do have LED's and I haven't checked to see what amps they use. I must check.

I do tend to use the least I can get away with.


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## Zebedee (Oct 3, 2007)

Just chatting to a friend on Skype about this, but unfortunately my multimeter is too cheap and nasty so I can't accurately check the usage.

I'll buy a better one from Maplin (only £6.99) and do some serious checking.

Wish I'd never started this now . . . wasn't bothered before, but now I just *have* to know for certain!! :roll: :roll:

Dave


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## JohnsCrossMotorHomes (Jul 21, 2007)

Zebedee said:


> Just chatting to a friend on Skype about this, but unfortunately my multimeter is too cheap and nasty so I can't accurately check the usage.
> 
> I'll buy a better one from Maplin (only £6.99) and do some serious checking.
> 
> ...


Carefull Dave at £6-95 your going to have heartburn spending all that!

Peter


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## Zebedee (Oct 3, 2007)

JohnsCrossMotorHomes said:


> Carefull Dave at £6-95 your going to have heartburn spending all that!
> Peter


Cheeky old sod. 8O

Must confess I did think long and hard about it Peter.

My wallet has nearly as many locks, chains and security devices as yours!! :roll: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Dave


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## Telbell (May 1, 2005)

We've got a battery monitor thingy that VB fitted and if I press a few buttons, turn a few things on and off, it shows how many amps are being used by different accessories and lights.

Do you mean I could've spent £6.65 on a voltmeter whatsit and not bothered with the Monitor?? 8O


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## Sargent (Feb 1, 2008)

Hi Dave, 4.2A does seem high but, have you calibrated the meter?
If you do this and then take a reading?? before you spend your hard earned cash.

Best regards

Ian


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## clive1821 (Mar 27, 2010)

As a rough rule of thumb each LED will consume 10mA so 100 LED will consume 1amp and so on.... its ok to use depending what capacity leisure battery you have and how careful you are in charging the batteries....


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## bestony (Oct 9, 2009)

LED, SMD, Could be CND, its not just about the power used, there are other reasons for using LEDs. Have you ever been sat in you motorhome on a hot sunny day and throught boy its hot in here, put your hand over the normal lights and feel the heat they generate. Now in the evening when you have most of them on, you now see why your motorhome is so warm inside. I have just brought a Rapido 9009 DFH from Chelston, Its on a 09 plate, and while the cleaners were getting the van ready, one of them had the kitchen cupboard open with all the lights on, when the cupboard was closed, heat damage to the door, now we have to wait for rapido to send one to chelston then on to us. So its not just about power used. Since then at the Newbury show l have changed most of the lights to LED, but before going mad and just buying any sort, go to one of the shows, talk to a specalist lighting man, and get the right sort. While at newbury l took a couple of the bulbs out and took them with me so l made sure l got the right sort giving me the right wattage. Now l can put my hand over any of the lights and hardly feel any heat. Got to be better..
regards
tony


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## PeterandLinda (Feb 21, 2009)

Hi

It has got to be worth doing to change from 20th Century incandescent lighting to 21st Century lighting but you do need to get over the shock of the high initial cost of LED replacement lamps. But think of it as an investment, you will be investing in something which will last much longer and consume far less power.

P&L


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## cabby (May 14, 2005)

I changed our bulbs last month to LED's no heat at all worth talking about. bought a batch off ebay 10 for £28 inc p+p. so far so good. :roll: :roll: as we very rarely use the spot/reading lamps have not changed them.
Voltage: 12v AC / DC (No polarity, Direct replacement if size fit in)
Watts: <1w 
Brightness: equivalent to 10W G4 capsule filament bulbs
LED type: 19 Warm White LED 3000k
Life time : 50000 Hrs Approx
Size: as in picture below
Angle: 120 °
Lumen: 50 Lm
Abm.:Î¦26mmx8mm 

cabby


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## Zebedee (Oct 3, 2007)

With reference to my original post (_away from which recent posters have strayed more than a little_ :roll:  ) I have received some excellent advice from Ian Sargent and have verified that my control panel is both accurate and correctly calibrated.

I have also found the reason why my LED lights consume 4.2 Amps. :roll:

There are 465 of them!!!!! 8O 8O

Topic terminated I think. There's no answer to that!! :wink: :lol:

Dave 

P.S.


clive1821 said:


> As a rough rule of thumb each LED will consume 10mA so 100 LED will consume 1amp and so on.... its ok to use depending what capacity leisure battery you have and how careful you are in charging the batteries....


Clive's calculations are obviously pretty damn close. (Thanks Clive.) 

They suggest a current of around 4.65 amps from my setup.

Never thought there were so many until I counted them!! 8O

Dave


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## ourden (May 1, 2010)

OK I have the MR16 12v 10w, if I get the LED ones do 
I stick to 10w?

Regards & Thanks


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## pjrenault (Aug 14, 2009)

*Beware of Leds*


Hello MH'ers,
My first post. Should the title to this strand be "LEDS: Beware of geeks bearing gifts" or "more than you actually wanted to hear about Leds etc"? :roll: (sorry: in-joke from we electrical/computer people).
Firstly there were one or two comments re the various abbreviations (TLAs or three letter acronyms to give them their proper name). 
SMD isn't actually surface mounted diode: it's close, but not close enough as the man on that quiz show used to say. SMD means surface mounted device. 
It's a generic name referring to all those modern spider-like electronic bits and bobs you find in your current electronic toys and which devices don't seem to have any wire leads as we have been used to seeing. As the devices have got smaller and/or required more connections to other devices engineers have worked to eliminate the space wasted by bulky wire connections from each device. Instead of wire leads the device has either rows of tiny, tiny legs or if it's a simple device with say two ends that need connecting it will have a solder pad on each end instead of wire leads. There are no holes in the board into which the legs/leads of devices fitted as previously, instead the legs of these devices or the solder pads are soldered, usually by automated processes, directly to the substrate (printed circuit board, flexible membrane or what have you that the device is mounted on): hence surface mounted device.

Because of the difficulty of repairing faulty SMDs without specialised equipment and training (hence a high cost event) faulty equipment is junked with repair being "by total replacement of the unit or board". In the trade SMD is often corrupted to "Simply Made for Dumping".

Take a peek at the JPR Electronics catalogue on line (optoelectronics section) and compare an ordinary LED (with wire leads) against its SMD equivalent.

Yes LED's are a route forward compared to our "old fashioned" and fragile incandescent bulbs, but like many such things the matter isn't quite as straightforward as it seems (remember how compact fluorescents were going to be the next big thing in our eco salvation?).

One of the most important things to be sure of when choosing LEDs is to pick the correct colour temperature. Many people find reading/working under LED light quite odd compared to mains/torch light. Colour perception goes for a ball of chalk if you try using some of the more wonderful derivations that give bluish light for instance. Depending on the layout of the individual LEDs in an array you can get anything from nice even lighting to some very odd shadowing effects. As someone said earlier go to the shows and see the things in action and talk to the vendors before committing to buy and install.

Cost of initial purchase: as of now they are still a "minority" purchase but, sadly there is a fact of life: the little blighters last 30 to 50 times longer than an incandescent bulb so even if/when LEDs become fully established as mainstream lighting, replacement sales are going to be lower and so profits will be spread over a lower number of sales for many years yet.

As for Zebedee's 4.2A current draw: wow! No wonder there were 400 odd of the little beasties. Think about that figure for a minute:
that's 12V x 4.2A = 50.4 watts. That's very nearly the power of one headlamp bulb, which would certainly light up the inside of most motorhomes (albeit pretty harshly and with horrendous shadows etc as it would be a single light source).
That's also 4.2AHr out of the leisure battery or if they were left on as background lighting for say 6hrs some 25Ahr! Given that you shouldn't totally flatten even leisure batteries then anyone on say 100AHr of battery would be pushed to get 3days at 6hr/day without any form of recharging and that's disregarding any other loads drawing Ahrs out of the battery in the same period.

The number in Zebedee's van would appear to be designer overkill (they put them in because they could, many will be in places where their light is lost/wasted (and where an incandescent bulb wouldn't even have been considered because of the heating/burn risk in that location)).

Chasing around the net produces a variety of information but as a rough rule of thumb it seems that for lower wattages 1W of LED can replace 8-10W of incandescent and at higher wattages this seems to fall off (e.g for 80 to 100W bulbs) to about 1W of LED to 6W of incandescent.
See http://www.designrecycleinc.com/led comp chart.html

So if Zebedee's LEDs run to some 50W that's roughly equivalent to 300W of incandescent lighting apparently as "background" illumination!

Again LED v Bulb is not always a win - win situation: the nuisance waste heat from incandescent bulbs in the summer is heat into your vehicle in winter (when lights are on longer and days are colder) that your heating system doesn't have to supply (every little helps). Try huddling round an LED! 

Oh and remember our eco-saviours the CFL which we were all going to use (guilty here too as for a while I carried a little 8W one instead of an ordinary bulb in a table lamp for in-van lighting at meal times etc). Take a look at the information on the above site, particularly in reference to mercury in a CFL. There's a whole range of arguments from "no problem at all" to "don't go near a broken CFL you'll die of mercury poisoning" out there, so yet again it's as clear as mud!

At the moment CFL's are classified for disposal under the WEEE directive and a broken CFL is hazardous waste. A broken CFL should be bagged (glass, powder and all bits swept up gently NOT vacuumed), and then taken to your nearest local authority hazardous waste disposal point (so don't chuck it in the nearest waste bin!). At least we didn't have that problem with ordinary bulbs.

Oh and LEDs etc aren't blameless either in the great eco debate. The production processes to form semi-conductor material and to create printed circuit boards etc use some horrendous chemicals many of which are highly toxic and/or poisonous and similarly produce some rather nasty waste material too. Googling "semiconductor manufacturing waste products" or similar may make you think twice before buying that Ifad device you didn't really need.
Sorry about the length of all that, I'll go back to sleep now.


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## UncleNorm (May 1, 2005)

Well, hello pjrenault. Thank you for your considerable post, very enLIGHTening! :roll: :wink: 

May I formally and warmly welcome you to MotorhomeFacts. With you having such a high level of expertise and experience, I hope your stay with us is a long and mutually fruitful one!


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## pjrenault (Aug 14, 2009)

*LEds: message from Uncle Norm*

Hello Norm,
Thanks for the welcome. Been a bit of a lurker since first joining as haven't had much time to be on here.
Apologies to all for the length of that first post, (old school engineer and technology enthusiast here) forgot I wasn't trying to evangelicise to a group of apprentices after all these years in the engineering game in one form or another.

There is at least one thing to be said for most modern LED lamps: they're no longer anywhere nearly as electrically fragile as they used to be. I can remember when we got some of the very first ones to experiment with and they cost the equivalent of a third of a week's pay each. Lifetimes were often measured in minutes due to their inability to cope with a sniff over their rated currents or reverse voltages. The mantra went: "Twinkle twinkle little LED, oops now it seems you're rather dead".
Now basic LEDs are about 7 - 15p each in single quantities and you have to try hard to break one (usually excessive heat from a soldering iron works as I've seen proven by various apprentices and students).

Be interesting to see if anyone has observed how they fare when welding takes place on the vehicle. Battery disconnected or not, long wires make good aerials.


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## LonesomeTwin (Nov 4, 2008)

In the good ole days, anything that used lots of LED's, like the old 7-segment displays, were multiplexed, aka strobed, so that only one LED was on at any one time but they switched so quick that the eye saw them all as on. Does this happen with these rope lights, as it would involve extra electronics and cost? Also would have thought that bright white LED's would take nearer 100mA than 10, which is 1.2W each!! Times 465 = a flat battery, might need closer research!

Straying slightly but sticking with lighting, low voltage halogen lamps are tempting at only 10W a time, but in my case all this promised efficency is blown away by the electronic transformer for them, which makes my inverter do an overload bleep when they're turned on.

For real lighting power saving low-energy lightbulbs are the canines gonads. You can light a van to daylight levels off about 60W, and I usually just have a single 5W bulb on. More than good enough for reading and listening to music  God bless tree huggers everywhere!


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## TDG (May 26, 2009)

*Re: Beware of Leds*



pjrenault said:


> ....
> Sorry about the length of all that, I'll go back to sleep now.


Got there before you :lol: :lol: :lol:


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## TDG (May 26, 2009)

UncleNorm said:


> ....May I formally and warmly welcome you to MotorhomeFacts.....


Not with LEDs you won't :roll:


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## pjrenault (Aug 14, 2009)

*Re: Beware of Leds*



TDG said:


> pjrenault said:
> 
> 
> > ....
> ...


Morning TDG,
There you are, see it worked, my message is multipurpose: cheaper than Horlicks, tastes better and depending where the ZZZs cut in might even deliver some useful info.   :roll: 
Cheers
Peter

Remember: an optimist is a pessimist who's not in possession of all the facts.


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## Hobbyfan (Jul 3, 2010)

My Hobby has these 'rope light' LEDs around the living area and around the fixed beds in the rear.

They do give a very pleasant soft lighting and I'd always assumed that they'd be very low consumption!

We call them the 'tart's boudoir' lights because when they're on, especially in the bedroom, they remind me of what a tart's boudoir may look like.

I say 'may' because obviously I have no first hand experience! That's my story and I'm sticking to it!


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## foll-de-roll (Oct 29, 2007)

Hi


Having been totally mesmerised by the technical jargon on what was originally a very simple bit of kit eg the humble lightbulb. I wonder if you could advise me on what bulb I require to replace the two spotlights, in my Exec, that we use for reading in bed. :roll: :roll: :roll: 


For the amount of time we use the mainlighting in the van I don't intend to spend a lot of money, in replacing all the bulbs and tubes in the van, with LEDs to save the LB, but I would like to replace the bulbs in the Spots above the single beds for our evenings read(or Sudoku). What an exciting life we lead (no moood lighting required here)    


Looked on Ebay there's so much choice. :? :? :? 

Cheers
Andy


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## Zebedee (Oct 3, 2007)

Hobbyfan said:


> My Hobby has these 'rope light' LEDs around the living area and around the fixed beds in the rear.
> They do give a very pleasant soft lighting and I'd always assumed that they'd be very low consumption!


See my original post . . . . . so did I! 8O 8O

Those are what we have, but they don't get used when we are off hook-up! :roll:

*Andy* You won't go far wrong with Aten Lighting.

It's the pin position which is important, but give them a call if you can't be sure. They are ever so helpful.

Dave


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## groucho (Apr 6, 2008)

Hi All
Just thought I'd join in with my recent experience.
My Hobby Siesta is 5.84 metres long and I had to replace some of the defunct led rope mood lighting above the cupboards at ceiling level over the kitchen and dinette.
The only place I could find the replacement rope lights was at Ambergate Caravans the UK Hobby importer in Derbyshire.
They have stock on the shelf. Well done Ambergate.
As my van is now over 2 years old it is out warranty so I decided to do it myself, having once been an electrical & mechanical technician.
The technician, stores and all staff at Ambergate were extremely helpful in giving advice on how to do the change over.
The rope of led lights comes in a length of 5.5 metres only and you have to cut and fit to make the replacement length for each position.
The cost is circa £60.00p a length.
The job is a complete pig to do and I'm sure it would be easier and quicker to pass a camel through the eye of a needle using a 12 volt blender.
I have now decided that these items are more correctly called "bad mood lights" and I'd be happier sitting in the dark!

Regards
Groucho


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## UncleNorm (May 1, 2005)

Hi Groucho... we have two lengths of mood lighting in Our Coral. Very nice... until you study the meter read-outs which show something approaching 4 amps being drawn!! 

My LEDs draw something like 1.8w, say, so 6 to the amp, 24 to 4 amps. So, my dilemma, do I use the 'dark' mood lighting or some of the LEDs? In view of the fact that we seldom use EHU, the answer is a no-brainer!! But... if we ARE on EHU, the whole lot can go on!!


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