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View Full Version : Need opinions/links for cabin and cockpit lighting



STV_Keith
12-20-2006, 11:05 AM
Sometime this winter my boat is getting completely rerigged. Right now, the two small lamps in the cabin don't work, so they are coming out. I'm not sure what my options are for lighting. The cabin is a V-berth setup, about 7-8' long. I think I'd like some general light in the cabin rather than spots. I'll probably put some kind of foot light where you step down into it as well, probably wired to the deck lights.
Here's the cabin so you have an idea of what I'm dealing with:
http://www.speedcraving.com/scarab/pics/images/DSCN5446.jpg
Here are the existing, non-working lights. There is one on each side:
http://www.speedcraving.com/scarab/pics/images/DSCN5447.jpg
Then the cockpit or deck area needs lighting too. Here's what I need to light up:
The rear area:
http://www.speedcraving.com/scarab/pics/images/DSCN5433.jpg
The front area:
http://www.speedcraving.com/scarab/glass_work/frontarea2.jpg
It would be nice to have colored lighting, like the neons I've seen in other rigs, but probably in LED's. Not sure if I want to stick with white for intensity/output or go with a light blue. Due to the narrow beam, I don't want anything that sticks too far out off the gunwale though. Flush mount would be really nice.
Suggestions? Links?
Thanks!

RiverDave
12-20-2006, 11:37 AM
Keith, for the hot ticket on interior lights check these out..
http://www.optronicsinc.com/oempages/mcl13.htm
Model # UCL-13CB is a white LED. They are originally made for trailer lights, but some higher end boat mfg's have been using them recently for interior lights with great success. They offer an oval chrome ring for them and the combination looks sick when it's installed. The price is right, and they are 12 volt etc.. :)
This is a picture of the chrome bezel. It's hard to imagine what it looks like when it's installed, but basically a chrome oval with a perfect fit clear inside of it.
http://www.optronicsinc.com/oempages/a13cb.htm
I'll find a distributor for ya near your area.
RD

STV_Keith
12-20-2006, 11:47 AM
I wonder if this one would be too bright for a cabin light:
http://www.optronicsinc.com/oempages/bul78cb.htm

RiverDave
12-20-2006, 12:18 PM
I wonder if this one would be too bright for a cabin light:
http://www.optronicsinc.com/oempages/bul78cb.htm
Way too bright.. If you've ever looked at an LED directly (6 inch oval tail light) they almost blind you at night if your on an even level with them..
Maybe if you mounted it as indirect lighting or something? either way, I think I'd use the ones I mentioned earlier, they aren't "blindingly" bright, but 2 - 4 of them in your cabin would light it up pretty good. 2 of them would make nice mood lighting, 3 of them you should be able to read no problems. You can also get them "clear" with red LED's in them... Put them on a seperate switch, and if you get a chick down in there put the red light on...
RD

Jbb
12-20-2006, 12:58 PM
Way too bright.. If you've ever looked at an LED directly (6 inch oval tail light) they almost blind you at night if your on an even level with them..
. Put them on a seperate switch, and if you get a chick down in there put the red light on...
RD
Red Room?.......:D

STV_Keith
12-20-2006, 06:10 PM
Hey RD, how about the little ones in the cabin, and the bigger ones out on the deck? Still too bright?

RiverDave
12-20-2006, 06:45 PM
Hey RD, how about the little ones in the cabin, and the bigger ones out on the deck? Still too bright?
I'd use the little ones out on the deck as well, down by your feet.. They are a LOT brighter then you think for a little light.. Those 6 inch ovals are blindingly bright if your looking right at them.
RD

Tom Brown
12-20-2006, 07:52 PM
It would be nice to have colored lighting, like the neons I've seen in other rigs, but probably in LED's. Not sure if I want to stick with white for intensity/output or go with a light blue.
Luxeon I LED emitters in the fixtures you have now. The lower bins have a blue tint but nothing noticeable. If you want pure white, you have to pay triple the price. The emitters you're looking for should be available for $1.25 each and you'll want a dozen or two of them.
Pretty much any tint you wish is available. Search the web for a color code breakdown. The LumiLEDs web site has a good chart available.
Don't go with a Lux III, they're too bright and would be a little severe for what you want. The new Luxeon K emitters are fine but of no advantage in your application. I wouldn't pay any extra for them.
Experiment with driver resistors to find the brightness you want. You will want to keep them down below 100 ma.
I've got dozens of sources but I suspect you could find them just as easily and cheaply on eBay.
LED..... cheap, bright, last forever... even when they're on and you're pounding through the waves, and best of all, the chicks go crazy over them.
Oh.... and I'd also ditch those SlowMC refrigerators in favor of some Mercs. :cool:

Tom Brown
12-20-2006, 07:55 PM
Way too bright.. If you've ever looked at an LED directly (6 inch oval tail light) they almost blind you at night if your on an even level with them.
Dave, there are different styles of LED that focus the light in different patterns. The Fraen style optics in those tail lights are designed to aim the light backward.
If Keith gets lambertian Luxeon I emitters, they will emit light in an excellent pattern for interior light and he can adjust the intensity by selecting his drive resistor.
He should be able to light the entire boat with around 5 watts of total power and heat.

STV_Keith
12-20-2006, 08:07 PM
Jeezus Tom, can you decipher that into English with some links for me? :hammer2: OK, how about just a link? Are these finished units ready to be mounted to the gunwale or bulkhead, or am I looking at "assembly"?
And about the slOMC's, I got just a little more in the WHOLE BOAT than the cost of one new 300x. Not to mention, I won't get lost in a sea of quiet, 3 liter V6 Mercs...can't miss the sound of a nasty, drystacked V8 at full song. :D

Rexone
12-20-2006, 08:13 PM
Is there any techno chit that this Tom Brown dude does not know about... geezus h. :2purples:

sawtooth
12-20-2006, 08:19 PM
STV Keith, give this place a try www.superbrightleds.com I was just looking the other night for a new way to light my boat and found this site, lots to chose from and pretty good prices from what I have seen. Good luck with your quest.

Tom Brown
12-20-2006, 09:26 PM
Jeezus Tom, can you decipher that into English with some links for me? :hammer2:
Keith, an LED is a semiconductor made using similar lithography techniques as any integrated circuit. A semiconductor expert would want to beat me up for saying that but to you and I, it's plain old, garden variety, photolithography.
That said, not all chips are the same. You know how they rate CPUs at different speeds? That's called 'binning'. They test a CPU to see how fast it will run and mark it at the appropriate speed. The idea is they end up with a bin full of 2 GHz chips, a bin fill of 2.2 GHz chips, a bin full of 2.4 GHz chips, and so on.
With LEDs, the bins are color tints. They try to make them all white and most of them are close but there are some variances. The bins are mainly color tints. Most of the light tints are indistinguishable from white, to you or I.
They also bin them based on light output as well as natural forward voltage.
Don't be put off, it's not that hard. Here are the bin codes explained:
http://home.comcast.net/~theledguy/bin_codes/index.htm
... so a Q3K emitter will look like this:
Output: 30~40 lumens max output
Tint: white
Voltage: 3.51~3.75 volts
Optics: bat wing (will throw light out it's sides)
This guy has a pack 5 bare emitters for 10 bucks.
http://theledguy.chainreactionweb.com/product_info.php?&products_id=99
To run them at half brightness (I speculate will be in the range you'd want), you could use a 220 ohm, 1/8 watt resistor. 5 bucks ought to get you 100 of those.
Here's a resistor calculator:
http://led.linear1.org/1led.wiz
How they work -
These emitters are just a piece of silicon wafer. What you see is not the wafer. The silicon chip is enshrouded in a plastic body that functions as a lens. Inside this body, above the diode junction on the silicon wafer, is a bubble of air. The top of that bubble is coated with phosphor.
You know how chip designers are hunting for ways to keep gate leakage down? Well... LED designers hunt for ways to get gate leakage up! The gate sprays out electrons which pass through the air pocket, hit the back side of the bubble which is coated in phosphor, and light the phosphor. The light we see comes from the phosphor.
They're mini TVs! That's exactly how a TV works. :D
The plastic case/lens can be shaped in several different ways. The are mainly comprised of lambertian high/low dome and bat wing. These function as spot, flood, and side emitting respectively.
OK... so you don't want to work with bare emitters.....
Check out one of the zillions of Luxeon and Cree based replacement bulbs.
Like these..... http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi?product=CAR
There are LED replacement bulbs for tail lights to dome lights and everything in between.
... or search the web for a zillion different automotive LED light fixtures.
... or look on eBay for even more selection. Search on Luxeon.
Oh yeah... all lights say they come with Luxeon LEDs. Roughly none of them really do. Anything made in China is probably Cree. It's pretty much a certainty. That's OK, Cree makes decent emitters too. For your job, they'll be just as good.

Tom Brown
12-20-2006, 09:31 PM
Phillips electronics bought Luxeon a couple of years ago and has ramped up LED production. They're making millions of them a month now. It won't be long before incandescent lightbulbs are all but obsolete.
Right now, we pay a premium for LEDs. That will change.
Remember when they charged us extra for 'digital tracking' on our VCRs? Once they got that functionality on a chip, they shortened their production lines because a technician was no longer required to align every machine at the end of the build process. They aligned themselves. Of course, they billed it as a feature and charged a bunch extra... for a while.
LEDs will go the same way.

CornWater
12-20-2006, 09:41 PM
Canatard... :mad:

Tom Brown
12-20-2006, 09:45 PM
Canatard... :mad:
You could never imagine how focking hammered I am right now.

Rexone
12-20-2006, 10:28 PM
Remember when they charged us extra for 'digital tracking' on our VCRs?
Yes I'm pretty sure my VCR has that shit.

STV_Keith
12-20-2006, 11:13 PM
OK, now my head hurts. Thanks for the links though. What about these: http://www.superbrightleds.com/mini_tubes.htm
Kinda intrigued with the ALM and ALS series on that page. ALM for floor lighting and ALS for the cabin.

Forkin' Crazy
12-20-2006, 11:35 PM
Red Room?.......:D
Stabbin' Cabin!!! ;)
Tom, anyone ever tell you that you were just a bit long winded?:eek:

h2oski2fast
12-20-2006, 11:43 PM
Luxeon I LED emitters in the fixtures you have now. The lower bins have a blue tint but nothing noticeable. If you want pure white, you have to pay triple the price. The emitters you're looking for should be available for $1.25 each and you'll want a dozen or two of them.
Pretty much any tint you wish is available. Search the web for a color code breakdown. The LumiLEDs web site has a good chart available.
Don't go with a Lux III, they're too bright and would be a little severe for what you want. The new Luxeon K emitters are fine but of no advantage in your application. I wouldn't pay any extra for them.
Experiment with driver resistors to find the brightness you want. You will want to keep them down below 100 ma.
I've got dozens of sources but I suspect you could find them just as easily and cheaply on eBay.
LED..... cheap, bright, last forever... even when they're on and you're pounding through the waves, and best of all, the chicks go crazy over them.
Oh.... and I'd also ditch those SlowMC refrigerators in favor of some Mercs. :cool:
Dave, there are different styles of LED that focus the light in different patterns. The Fraen style optics in those tail lights are designed to aim the light backward.
If Keith gets lambertian Luxeon I emitters, they will emit light in an excellent pattern for interior light and he can adjust the intensity by selecting his drive resistor.
He should be able to light the entire boat with around 5 watts of total power and heat.
Thanks for taking the fun out of this thread Brown.:) :) :)

Forkin' Crazy
12-20-2006, 11:47 PM
Keith, I like that boat. That's the first time I've seen the inside. :cool:

Jbb
12-21-2006, 03:16 AM
They dont call nerd Brown....."the firestarter"...for nothing!.....Tom ....can you make me one of these?
http://www.break.com/index/super_high_powered_flash_light.html

phebus
12-21-2006, 07:29 AM
Remember when they charged us extra for 'digital tracking' on our VCRs? Once they got that functionality on a chip, they shortened their production lines because a technician was no longer required to align every machine at the end of the build process. They aligned themselves. Of course, they billed it as a feature and charged a bunch extra... for a while.
I'm waiting for them to come down a little more, and I'm going to buy one. My Beta machine is starting to give me fits.........:)

STV_Keith
12-21-2006, 08:37 AM
Keith, I like that boat. That's the first time I've seen the inside. :cool:
Thanks FC. :) That's where the OMC head studs are going too. Here's a few more pics for you.
http://www.speedcraving.com/scarab/pics/images/DSCN5432.jpg
http://www.speedcraving.com/scarab/pics/images/DSCN5431.jpg
http://www.speedcraving.com/scarab/pics/images/DSCN5434.jpg
http://www.speedcraving.com/scarab/pics/images/DSCN5442.jpg