Upgrade LED lighting

Remember, on RV 12vdc, the black wire is hot, the white wire is ground.

M4Products.com has high quality 12V LEDs that are fully regulated, not polarity dependent and dimmable. They have a variety of sizes. I purchased the Elite series with the bright 5630 LEDs and they produced more light at 1/5 the power.

They also have fluorescent bulb replacements. Since fluorescent bulbs are efficient the LEDs use 1/2 the power but are flicker free. If you lose a ballast then this will be a cheaper alternative as a new ballast will be expensive. It does require you to rewire the fixture to bypass the ballast.

I looked up the light bulb and found it is a 12vdc CFL bulb. Didn't know such a thing existed. No indication of whether or not it is polarity dependent. Other than that I don't see any reason your setup would not work.

If reversing the polarity doesn't work, check to make sure that you have 12v at the fixture. Possible that you blew a fuse.

The bulb I'm currently trying to use is a Feit Electric, ECO bulb, 12 volt DC, BPLESL13T/MAR-12, 60 watt.

I will attempt to reverse the wires at the fixture and if that doesn't work I will hold the wires directly to the bulb. I will keep you posted.

Thanks !

As said above, LED lights MUST be connected with the correct polarity. Simply try reversing the wires and that should be all it is.

You took a 120 volt residential light fixture and installed a 12 volt DC bulb?

A pic of what you have may help.

Can you take the new light fixture apart to find out how it is wired? How about connecting the 12v energy efficient bulb directly to 12v to see if it works?

Could you post a link to the new light fixture? Might help to know more about it.

Do you have a meter? It will be easy to diagnose problems with a meter. If not, remove the new fixture, take trailer wiring and put them against the base of your new bulb, got light?

The ground wire of the 120V AC fixture has no relevance in a DC application.

I'm looking to replace the existing LED ceiling light since it is too far away from the vanity/mirror. I bought a residential pennant style light fixture with a 12 volt energy efficient light bulb and connected the fixture to the two 12 volt wires ( black & white )that I had disconnected from the existing LED light. The new light did not work, is it possible that the new light bulb won't work on DC or that the ground wire from the new light fixture is not connected since there are only 2 wires in the ceiling ?

Question; try a different 12 volt Med base light build designed for 12volt DC or put up with the existing lighting. There is no option to convert to 110 volt without tearing open the ceiling and walls to run new wiring.

Thanks for any assistance.

westend wrote:
Have you possibly reversed the phase? LED likes correct polarity.

x2

Try reversing the wires.

Hi,

Most medium base LED's are set up for AC electricity, with a built in circuit to change it from AC to DC power. Normally that means it will not accept DC power.

What I did in my RV is disconnect the wires to the old blub base, then connect those 2 wires to a LED panel base. Then this plug can accept one of the panels, so I put two panels in each side of the factory installed twin light fixtures. So I can run 2-4 panels - say in the bathroom where I wanted a lot of light. This is only 0.4 amps, and with a 400 watt solar system, I sort of wasteful of power! It is nice!

Check out this type of panel too.

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Free-shipping-COB-Chip-LED-24led-smd-Car-Interior-Light-T10-Festoon-Dome-Adapter-12V-Car/211920_1705672704.html

It is super bright, and only 4 watts! Because the LED's typically put out about 10X the light of a incandescent light, that would be equal light from a 40 watt regular lamp.

THis one will replace a 1156 bulb, and use the factory base.

Clicky 2

Fred.