Led Interior Lights

[YoungSage]

Greetings friends!

I am planning on replacing the incandescent bulbs in my rig with the LED bulbs. I have found two products I am curious about: one a panel and the other a bulb.... Which would be the smoothest option? Here is a picture of my existing bulb and two links to the LED options I am considering. Ideas?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/10X-Warm-White-1156-BA15S-27SMD-5050-LED-Light-RV-Camper-Car-Backup-7506-/201109734158?pt=Motors_RV_Trailer_Camper_Parts_Accessories&vxp=mtr&hash=item2ed313030e

http://www.ebay.com/itm/10X-RV-Trailer-48-SMD-Warm-White-High-Power-LED-Light-Panel-1156-BA15S-Adapter-/201086212273?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&hash=item2ed1ac18b1&vxp=mtr

[Derek up North]

'Smoothest' as in most 'Plug & Play'? They'll both just plug in, the flat 'panel' ones will involve sticking the panel to your existing fixture. Many use a glue gun.

[Maineah]

The flat panel will give you the most light. Neither one tells you any thing about wattage or lumens but a tower bulb shines light up and to the sides the flat panel shines all it's light down.

[rad wolfe]

I've used Ikea ledberg strip light Number: 501.920.73 . just cut the electric cord so it doesn't include the transformer(110 to 12v) and hardwire to your outlet. It's about $15. I mounted the 30 inch light on a thin wood strip and can move the whole unit for light to the overhead bed, kitchen or aim towards the back. Can't take a pic cause the toy is all wrapped for winter AND we're sunning in south Mexico for the duration.

[zero]

Greetings friends!

I am planning on replacing the incandescent bulbs in my rig with the LED bulbs. I have found two products I am curious about: one a panel and the other a bulb.... Which would be the smoothest option? Here is a picture of my existing bulb and two links to the LED options I am considering. Ideas?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/10X-Warm-White-1156-BA15S-27SMD-5050-LED-Light-RV-Camper-Car-Backup-7506-/201109734158?pt=Motors_RV_Trailer_Camper_Parts_Accessories&vxp=mtr&hash=item2ed313030e

http://www.ebay.com/itm/10X-RV-Trailer-48-SMD-Warm-White-High-Power-LED-Light-Panel-1156-BA15S-Adapter-/201086212273?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&hash=item2ed1ac18b1&vxp=mtrimage.jpg

With the first ones you posted - the non-panel types -they won't fit into certain lights that previously used standard 1156 type bulbs. All depends how recessed the bulb-sockets are. The protruding LED cylinder has a right-angle bottom edge that sticks out further and earlier then the curved glass on the standard bulbs.

[Sunnynshare]

I put the flat ones in several years ago. I even stuck one in my daily driver as a dome light cause they are so good and bright. I did not glue or stick anything -- they are just hanging and laying on the white plastic translucent covers -- they are that cool to the touch. Kim

[YoungSage]

Thanks team. I went with the panels with the 3m sticky back. Should have them soon.

[Debbit]

About a month ago I purchased 10 double light fixtures, with bulbs, from Amazon. $100. I've replaced all double fixtures and couldn't be happier. Bright, low energy use, easy. DH mounted one under stove hood too, and I can SEE to cook!

[shibs]

I bought a few from ebay and amazon for my mini after asking here.

I think the flat panels will last longer as they will air cool faster and keep cooler than the bulbs.

[Totem]

3m sticky back SMDs are the way to go.Just wish someone had pointed me that way before I burned through a corn cob style bulb set the first pass; they all burned out shorted out or melted. I have yet to have a single failure on a sticky back SMD flat board; even had one submerged under standing water and it still worked? awesome lights those.

[Allan]

I stuck my flat panel LED's to the inside of my fixtures with that spongy double-sided adhesive tape. I wasn't able to find replacement covers for the old fixtures so I bought an acrylic translucent sheet for fluorescent fixtures and cut out replacements for the old cracked plastic covers. The lights are cool enough so that the new covers don't need to be convex.

[shibs]

3m sticky back SMDs are the way to go.Just wish someone had pointed me that way before I burned through a corn cob style bulb set the first pass; they all burned out shorted out or melted. I have yet to have a single failure on a sticky back SMD flat board; even had one submerged under standing water and it still worked? awesome lights those.

Totem,

Thanks for confirming my assumption :-)

I too bought some of those corn cob style bulbs, newbie mistake....

which SMD did you get?

[Totem]

i got mine off of ebay and they were identical to the link someone posted earlier in this thread, I think I got like 20 of them for 60 bucks delivered or something. I had extras so i used them in my cabin and truck. they are great; i have left them on for days no noticable effect on battery. Try that with an incandescent... will not be able to start truck etc.

[zero]

I fail to see why the corn-cob lights are a "mistake." I put in many in two RVs with zero failures or problems. Over 20 of them. They work great but I assume not every corn-cob looking bulb made in China and for sale in the USA is the same.

My only slight problem with my "corn cob" bulbs is the lower-OD-diameter close to the base. They will not fit into certain partially recessed sockets.

[shibs]

I fail to see why the corn-cob lights are a "mistake." I put in many in two RVs with zero failures or problems. Over 20 of them. They work great but I assume not every corn-cob looking bulb made in China and for sale in the USA is the same.

My only slight problem with my "corn cob" bulbs is the lower-OD-diameter close to the base. They will not fit into certain partially recessed sockets.

JD,

Heat dissipation, in a confined space, the corn-o-cob bulb will run hotter than the flat panels,

heat being an enemy of the leds, I am assuming that they will not out last the flat panels.

Q: Now the quality of the leds do matter,

Someone pls educate us on which leds are better and how identify them.

[WME]

I've used these for 1 year, so far so good.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/12-x-RV-LED-Replacement-120-Degree-bulb-1156-base-250-LUM-12-24v-11568305-12-/321493980758

[Vanman]

I got a pack of these, http://www.amazon.com/Amico-BA15S-68-SMD-Brake-Backup/dp/B007VLFENE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366145356&sr=8-1&keywords=Amico+10+Pcs+Car+1156+BA15S+1206+68-SMD+LED .

They work sooo good I got 10 more and replaced my Toyota turn and back-up lites as well as all the lamps in the RV.

Especially like the color of the light, much better than the yellow of the bulbs. I have also switched some of my home CFL's with LED's.

After years in the RV and turn and back-up lites in the Toyota , no failures as of yet

[zero]

JD,

Heat dissipation, in a confined space, the corn-o-cob bulb will run hotter than the flat panels,

heat being an enemy of the leds,

I don't see heat as an issue. LEDs put out less then half the heat of the bulbs they are replacing.

[Totem]

It does matter and shibs is hitting the nail on the head. The corn cob LEDs are inferior because they are old LEDs and not newer SMD or cree style diodes. The corn cobs I speak of are the older original LED bulbs and they fail in part because they are weakend during the installation; the twisting of the housing into the socket cracks solder, shorts and weakens the circuits.

The nice SMD panels are warmer, (when in warm white selection) and they are simply stuck into place with 3m tape. The old corn cob non SMD original LED bulbs are crap plain and simple; they are also only a color; blueish white, blue, red green amber... yuk. I suppose they are fashionable right now though since its christmas but thats it. They are depeche mode for the other 11 months a year and thats IF they arent shorting out and giving an epileptic a seizure while trying to read a book.

[zero]

It does matter and shibs is hitting the nail on the head. The corn cob LEDs are inferior because they are old LEDs and not newer SMD or cree style diodes.

You can say it until your face turns blue. Fact still remains that many people have bought LEDs referred to as "corn-cob style" by the sellers, and done just fine with them. I've had NO failures and NO problems with over 20 in use. NO sharp unpleasant light either. With the latter though - I've had many LEDs of just about every configuration made that gave off horrible and annoying light (for lack of a better adjective). I've got a two-story cabin that runs on 12 volts solar and I had a miserable time finding LEDs that made light as nice as incandescents. That includes a few Cree LEDs I got at Home Depot.

Not everyone has had the bad experience you've had with the bulbs and I am sure they are not all the same - even if given the title of "corn cob."

[Totem]

You need to qualify your blanket statement before my face will turn color, what type of LED did you use, smd cobs? If so we are not talking about the same product. Smd chips are flat and dont have all of the pressure in two protruding pins into the solder connect...

[Totem]

Example of non smd crappy cobs:

http://m.ebay.com/itm/221558362335?nav=SEARCH

[zero]

You need to qualify your blanket statement before my face will turn color, what type of LED did you use, smd cobs? If so we are not talking about the same product. Smd chips are flat and dont have all of the pressure in two protruding pins into the solder connect...

I did not make any "blanket statement." YOU did. You stated . . "The corn cob LEDs are inferior."

Note you did not say "some" are inferior. That is, by definition, a "blanket statement."

To my understanding of American English - to indicate that "all are bad" is a blanket statement.

To say the ones I got are "good" is not.

All I said is . . the ones I got (over 20 of them) have worked fine. Note there is no broad-sweeping comment in that. Just applies to my personal experience with what I have gotten. Do I know which factory in which country they came from? No. Did the seller I got them from refer to them as "corn cob" style ? Yes.

Mine came from LEDlight.com Like I said earlier. I've got over 20 and all have been fine. Good looking light and no failures. Certianly nothing came "loose" when I had to grip the corn-kernels tlo plug in the bulbs.

[Vanman]

JD, did you get the 6000K or 3000K and have you checked the amps in the RV?

Mine these: http://www.amazon.com/Amico-BA15S-68-SMD-Brake-Backup/dp/B007VLFENE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366145356&sr=8-1&keywords=Amico+10+Pcs+Car+1156+BA15S+1206+68-SMD+LED , are 6000K to 5000K, a guess from past experience, and draw .6 to .66 Amps each one varies a bit.

[Maineah]

My complaint with the tower bulbs is the dissipation of light they are all over the place that's why I prefer a flat panel that points in the direction of where you need the light the most. The fixtures are not real reflective (hard to do with cheap plastic) An 1156 bulb outputs around 400 lumans the tower bulbs are not and neither are the panel LED's but they are closer to that and point and point the light in the right direction. An 1156 bulb sucks up 24 watts no matter what LED you put in it is a huge improvement. I have 15 LED's in my travel trailer with all of them on I draw 3.08 amps (verified with my Fluke meter). If they were all 1156 bulbs it would be right around 30 amps!

[Maineah]

JD, did you get the 6000K or 3000K and have you checked the amps in the RV?

Mine these: http://www.amazon.com/Amico-BA15S-68-SMD-Brake-Backup/dp/B007VLFENE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366145356&sr=8-1&keywords=Amico+10+Pcs+Car+1156+BA15S+1206+68-SMD+LED , are 6000K to 5000K, a guess from past experience, and draw .6 to .66 Amps each one varies a bit.

The whiter the light (higher degrees K) the more light you will get from them (there is an age factor involved here too old guys need higher color temp) but the higher the degrees K the bluer the light 3500 to 4500 is more what you would expect from house hold lights. Sun light is around 7500 to11,000K

[Vanman]

"The whiter the light (higher degrees K) the more light you will get from them (there is an age factor involved here too old guys need higher color temp) but the higher the degrees K the bluer the light 3500 to 4500 is more what you would expect from house hold lights. Sun light is around 7500 to11,000K"

Yeah I know about that from long ago when we had our first energy troubles here and I converted over to compact fluorescent lamps that looked crummy !!! Found out about color temperature and where to get the (expensive then) CF's at the kind of white light I prefer. Have also found the xxxxxK rating does not always match what you get .
Latest was I replaced one of the tubes in the center top of the RV fixture. Read the label as a "cool white" but when I plugged it in it was that familiar sickly yellow. The fine print says 4100K which isn't cool white at all, even for the incandescent bulbs I used to get. It's going back.
Lately I have found with the cameras it's sometimes better to guess at a xxxxK temp set manually in the DSLR's than to trust the autowhitebalance, Another reason to shoot in RAW.

[zero]

I never checked any of mine with a amp-meter. Wasn't a concern of mine. I already knew they draw a lot less amps then the incandescents I yanked out. My reason for changing was based on two things. Heat and longevity. With heat - some of the plastic covers on the lights had spots where they'd gotten so hot they started to melt. Now with the LEDs they are not even warm to the touch. And longevity? These so-called "corn-cob" bulbs are supposedly tested to last 30,000 hours. The original incandescents 300-1000 hour bulb life. There is one HUGE advantage with LEDs over incandescents of CFLs that I favor. That is the ability to be frequently turned "on" and "off" and not suffer from it. LEDs are the only type out of the three that do NOT get their projected lives shortened by turning "on" and "off" too much.

As to light quality? I have found no way to determine by just reading specs. Plugging in and trying is what has worked for me. My "corn-cobs" make just the light I wanted inside my RV. Not glaring, good enough diffusion. That was just luck. I took the recommendation of a seller that sells a lot of them and made claims on each bulb as to quality-of-light. I took the seller's word for it and seems the claims were correct. When I had to furnish a two story off-grid cabin with 12 volt LED bulbs I was not so lucky. First bulbs came from Ebay and Amazon and were horrible. Light was so sharp and piercing it somehow made me angry just by being near them. Next attempt was Home Depot. The first Cree bulbs I got were also lousy. Then more Cree bulbs came in with different sorts of light-equiv ratings. I finally found some that had "warm" useful light.

I just changed out a entire church ceiling with those newer Cree bulbs from Home Depot. The reason was not energy savings. It was the difficulty of changing bad bulbs on a very high ceiling and those bulbs get tuned on and off a lot. The incandescents had very short lifes and so did the CFLs they tried. Thus the reason we just changed them all to LEDs.

[Totem]

those bulbs you used are SMD cobs; better than old style LED cobs but still failure prone compared to flat mount chips.

Also, for those that think they are saving some kind of energy on the home light bulb version of these think again with a thermal camera; the step down conversion of 110/220 to 12 volts causes waste heat and loss. To truly reap energy savings in a home one must actually use a 12 volt system with only one step down in the circuit or separate 12 volt circuit... otherwise waste is in all those bulb housing transformers which incidentally are the common failure point on household LEDS including those offered at home depot. In my experience the perceived "longevity" of LED is hit or miss because of this. Many times when a household corncob bulb fails the chips are still good; at 12 volt... its the step down circuitry the has in fact bit the dust.

[Gulfstream Greg]

Found that the flat smd panels are the best for me. Bought them off ebay real cheap. Took some old bulbs, broke out the glass and soldered in some wires and connected them to the panels. I just let the panels float on the inside on top of the plastic lens. Only problem I have with them is that they are too bright at times. Would be nice if they could dim. I have not tried pulse width modulation with these modules and at times I have HF radio equipment operating that and have found that the ebay pulse width modulation dimmers generate receiver noise that is unacceptable.

[Maineah]

those bulbs you used are SMD cobs; better than old style LED cobs but still failure prone compared to flat mount chips.

Also, for those that think they are saving some kind of energy on the home light bulb version of these think again with a thermal camera; the step down conversion of 110/220 to 12 volts causes waste heat and loss. To truly reap energy savings in a home one must actually use a 12 volt system with only one step down in the circuit or separate 12 volt circuit... otherwise waste is in all those bulb housing transformers which incidentally are the common failure point on household LEDS including those offered at home depot. In my experience the perceived "longevity" of LED is hit or miss because of this. Many times when a household corncob bulb fails the chips are still good; at 12 volt... its the step down circuitry the has in fact bit the dust.

The waste is worth the gain. Every LED 12 volt or 120 volt produces heat they are not 100% efficient. Granted the conversion need to power the LED's produces some heat but most of it is produced by the LED it's self they are driven hard and need a heat sink for house hold situations. A PAR20 LED generally is a single chip it is being pushed to over 500 lumens it needs to be cooled and multi-chip 12 volt unit is often 15-20 small chips with less than half the light output. A PAR20 (I have 15) draw 8 watts each including the watts lost to heat they replace a 50 watt incandescent bulb rated at 550 lumens that runs much hotter and wastes light going in directions of no use. The PAR 20 LED’s in my house are far brighter that the tungsten bulbs they replaced verified by my wife an independent observer. You could rewire your house to use 12 volts that would be nice except for the fact all the wiring would have to be replaced with a much larger wire to carry the load, all the breakers would have to be replaced with DC units and screw in LED standard base 12 volt bulbs are non existent.

[Totem]

"You could rewire your house to use 12 volts that would be nice except for the fact all the wiring would have to be replaced with a much larger wire to carry the load, all the breakers would have to be replaced with DC units and screw in LED standard base 12 volt bulbs are non existent."

this made me laugh... you obviously do not understand electrical current for LEDs. They barely require any current.

My cabin is wired for LEDs and was done using nothing more than telephone wire.

12 volt LEDs do not require very much current and as such have not very much of a "load". some of my runs to the SMD panels are over 100 feet and they are just as bright as the 6 feet runs. Also, Harbor freight sells 12 volt screw in standard bases as well as screw in 12 volt high efficiency gas bulbs. they even give you them free in their solar panel set ups. I don't know about you but I have literally had at least 20 LED 120 vac bulbs die from the step down boards going bad. they are crappily quality controlled. The bonus for me is that when torn apart the smd chips that are slid into the slots of the cob housing can then go on to be used in RV or Cabin runs just fine.

I can only imagine your house 12 volt wired in 2 gauge to support that "load"... what a load!

[Gulfstream Greg]

"You could rewire your house to use 12 volts that would be nice except for the fact all the wiring would have to be replaced with a much larger wire to carry the load, all the breakers would have to be replaced with DC units and screw in LED standard base 12 volt bulbs are non existent."

this made me laugh... you obviously do not understand electrical current for LEDs. They barely require any current.

My cabin is wired for LEDs and was done using nothing more than telephone wire.

12 volt LEDs do not require very much current and as such have not very much of a "load". some of my runs to the SMD panels are over 100 feet and they are just as bright as the 6 feet runs. Also, Harbor freight sells 12 volt screw in standard bases as well as screw in 12 volt high efficiency gas bulbs. they even give you them free in their solar panel set ups. I don't know about you but I have literally had at least 20 LED 120 vac bulbs die from the step down boards going bad. they are crappily quality controlled. The bonus for me is that when torn apart the smd chips that are slid into the slots of the cob housing can then go on to be used in RV or Cabin runs just fine.

I can only imagine your house 12 volt wired in 2 gauge to support that "load"... what a load!

X

[Totem]

?

[YoungSage]

I bought some of the sticky foam backed LED panels and installed them tonight. In about ten minutes of running them the sticky back melts due to heat - creating smoke - and the LEDs are running HOT. Strange. I have not heard anyone report this here. I am a little sketched by these things and will be putting my regular bulbs back in till I can find a solution. Thoughts?