Want to replace incandescent bulbs with brighter LED
Has anyone tried these and if so are they really as bright as they claim?
Forum Discussion
2oldman wrote:
They are very cheap, so beware. The usual problem is cheaper LEDs don't have a wide voltage range tolerance, so when your converter is pumping out 14+ volts they may start flickering and burning out.
I didn't find any voltage spec other than "12v", but one reviewer said 11-14 volts. So you may want to ask about it.
^^^THIS^^^
One of the pictures does show the backside of the circuit board, it is using a simple resistor current limiting setup which severely limits the voltage range.
While you can safely operate LEDs in a undervoltage situation, overvoltage will quickly lead to LED burnouts with this simple current limiting setup.
Dry camping with no converter or solar charging happening you would be "safe", but add in the converter or solar charging and the voltage can rise above 14V since many converters and even solar controllers are designed to deliver 14.4V-15V while charging.
The good part of these ones is they have a bridge rectifier built in which means they are not polarity sensitive so even if the fixture has the pos and neg switched, the LEDs will still light.
Best advice I can give is buy a couple and try it under charging conditions and see what happens..
