led style...?

The 500-watt models are far too bright for anything but industrial use. I had a cobra head streetlight modified using a tig welded finned 18" X 4" heat sink out the top. This piece is now a crosswalk street lamp that CFE erected and is paying the power bill. The 180 degree beam. Spread lights up the whole street area. Flatbeds hauling rebar speed through the pueblo and now all the children including my granddaughters are safer at night.CFE is also paying for a timer cobra head above the futbol field. Next is a pair of Nav Lights that will guide the pangueros in at night in case of an emergency. One light above the other and set back 10-meters.

I could not go stronger than 10-watts in the bus. Above each chip is CPU heat sink with integral fan. The living room warm white is on a dimmer. Diffused leaded glass lens marine fixtures. The variable power supply and IR thermocouple are a godsend in lighting design where heat dissipation is a nightmare. Dial the voltage back on the bucker.

BTW few commercial fixtures are driven to chip advertised potential. Again the issue is inadequaye heat-sinking. A 100-watt outdoor fixture is commonly driven at 70-watts. E=MC2 design does not work unless a big heat sink is used. Look at 10-watt LED heat sinks on eBay to get a perspective. They are circular, 90 mm with lots of radial fins.

I am a commercial electrician so I know all about LEDs and their limits and colors. In fact, check out the picture below of the last job we just completed for a large park in the City of Chicago. All LED in the whole building. Pretty amazing how far they have come.

I prefer warm white. The cool white in a camper reminds me of an Aerostream and makes me nauseous. And yes, 2.5 watts is fine since each fixture has 2 lamps. I could probably even go less.

Even at 2.5watts I would be going from 200 watts to 25 total watts on those 5 fixtures. 2 amps vs 16.6 amps is a huge difference and will work the converter less and help the battery when dry docking.

canopy 1 by RoyBelluomini, on Flickr

dissipating the heat is a huge as of now unresolvable issue with lamps stronger than 2.5 watts housed in an RV fixture.

This I can believe. The small size of the fixture is really working not to your favor. I think you may have to cobble up your own fixtures to overcome the trapped heat issue.

FWIW, I mounted my lesser 36 or 48 SMD panels on a piece of sheet aluminum. Even though my system voltage reaches 14.5 and above, all of the cheap panel LED's keep functioning. I assume that the aluminum sheet helps with dissipation.

How much current and which LED configuration are you using? These are the whole casa lights you were working on?

Remember the scene with the little boy in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind? He's stading in front of a door with insanely bright light flaring through the cracks.

Put 200-watts of LED to work inside your rig and that's a pretty close desription of what ypur neighbors are going to see. I build 100 -500 actual watt LED fixtures. Ten watts is pretty bright. I have a 30-watt shining over my head and it renders directional light brighter than a 100-watt incandescent. Most retrofit small plate LEDs for RVs are TWO POINT FIVE WATTS. Not amps, WATTS.

dissipating the heat is a huge as of now unresolvable issue with lamps stronger than 2.5 watts housed in an RV fixture.
.5

I believe he meant converter- regardless, tenbear gave the answer. Buy a couple to test, warm white and cool white. See which you like. Warm mimics incandescent, cool mimic daylight. I like cool, my wife likes warm. We use warm :)

I'm confused. Are the lights 120v and you are using an inverter to run them? Or are they 12v and you hear your converter? I assumed they were 12v.

It's early :D I am planning on camping out next month at a music fest I go to. My PUP only had 4 lamps you could chose to light one or both. This camper will drain the battery in a matter of hours with those lamps lit up.

RoyBell wrote:

Chris Bryant wrote:

RoyBell wrote:
I would like to change my lights out to LED. One switch runs 5 lights at once. That's 200 watts @ 12 volts. If my math is correct, that is 16 amps. I can really hear the inverter buzzing away when the lights are on. When I turn them off, it gets quiet again. Anyone not like the LED and switch back?

40 watt LEDs? That would be like a gazzilion candlepower, the equivalent of somewhere around 500 watts of incandescent.

Current lamps are 20 watts each, 2 in each fixture. Not looking to get 20 watts in led

Sorry- I completely misunderstood..

Chris Bryant wrote:

RoyBell wrote:
I would like to change my lights out to LED. One switch runs 5 lights at once. That's 200 watts @ 12 volts. If my math is correct, that is 16 amps. I can really hear the inverter buzzing away when the lights are on. When I turn them off, it gets quiet again. Anyone not like the LED and switch back?

40 watt LEDs? That would be like a gazzilion candlepower, the equivalent of somewhere around 500 watts of incandescent.

Current lamps are 20 watts each, 2 in each fixture. Not looking to get 20 watts in led

RoyBell wrote:
I would like to change my lights out to LED. One switch runs 5 lights at once. That's 200 watts @ 12 volts. If my math is correct, that is 16 amps. I can really hear the inverter buzzing away when the lights are on. When I turn them off, it gets quiet again. Anyone not like the LED and switch back?

40 watt LEDs? That would be like a gazzilion candlepower, the equivalent of somewhere around 500 watts of incandescent.