Fluorescent to LED conversion
I have 2 of these fluorescent fixtures in the Lance, they work great and give off lots of light but not really very energy efficient when boondocking. I looked at swapping in LED bulbs in place of th...
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deltabravo wrote:Problem is LEDs are very sensitive to voltage changes. It's not like a regular bulb that can get 12v or 16v and not explode.wopachop wrote:
Also note this style of LED does not like getting a voltage over 12.5v. Let alone the normal 13v float charge. Does your converter do a weekly 14v charge? If you notice it happen i would turn off your LED dealio.
You haven't seen the sepcs of the LEDs he bought, so your post about getting hot with voltages too high, etc. and "Amazon LEDs being bad" and the like is unfounded.
I bought a bunch of LED strips and made RV lights out of them. Used a variable voltage regular and watt meters to play around and take measurements. 14v is really hard on the LED strips and causes them to burn out. You might not notice because the individual LED is actually made of several different emitters. Put on a welding mask and look closely at your 2 or 5 year old LED strips that see 14v occasionally. In my experience many burnt out.
Went a different route and starting building Cree LEDs and a small mean well driver. They came out awesome. Constant current regardless of voltage change.
For the LED strips I would recommend a cheap dimmer that reduces voltage. If you are in your trailer and notice the converter is putting out 14.4v you could dim the lights to increase their lifespan.
The pwm does not work as well for this. It's still getting hammered with 14v. Just in pulses. It's one of the few times I would choose a voltage dimmer over pwm.
