Want to replace incandescent bulbs with brighter LED

[d1h]

Has anyone tried these and if so are they really as bright as they claim?

[2112]

No issues after using these LED paddle lights for a few months. We like them and they have received the DW stamp of approval. They solved a problem of not enough light at the restroom vanity mirror while she's painting on her face. Or shall I say putting on her makeup. This turned out to be a good buy for us. Plus I'm having fun playing with the leftovers. I'm making a 3 paddle light bar

[dodge_guy]

I have the 500K and while bright they are nice. I have the regular color in the other lights so when I don’t want the brightness I turn those on.

[donut_dave]

they almost give too much light/bright. go with the softer ones.

[CharlesinGA]

I quit reading after the first page, but all I can say is https://m4products.com/

These are quality products designed by and manufactured to their specs. If you buy different types of LEDs for different fixtures and specify the same "color" (I prefer natural white) you get..... the same color, not a mishmash of different, near colors, or some so far apart that you think they made a mistake fullfilling the order.

I have converted 3 RVs so far and use M4 for all of them. Its money well spent.

Charles

[2112]

I found a use for these LED paddles. My camper only used 6 so I had 14 left over.

I soldered a PCB mount 5.5mm barrel connector on the connection pads and use a 12V wall wart to power it. I may make a stand or hanger for it.

[2112]

I received my pack of 20 warm white LEDs. All 20 work. We like the color and brightness of the warm white.

From my testing:
They are non-polarized. You can plug them in either way
They can all tolerate 11.5V to 15.0V

Current is independent of voltage but dependent on temperature. At room temp they all start at 320mA. As they warm up the current dropped and settled at 260mA. I tortured tested one by wrapping it in a cloth and tightly wrapped it in a plastic bag. After 15 minutes it became seriously hot and the current dropped to 215mA. I don't have a way to accurately measure temperature so seriously hot is all I can say. However, all LEDs on that panel continued to light and the current returned to 260mA as it cooled back to nominal operational temperature.

I started a 14V burn-in test yesterday on the one I tortured. It's still operational after 24hrs drawing 260mA. I'll let this run on my bench for at least a few more days.

One thing I did discover is they don't make good contact when you plug them into the socket to far. I found the best approach is with power on, push it into the socket all the way until it goes out and then pull it out a little until it comes back on. All 20 behaved the same way.

[Sjm9911]

Gdetrailer wrote:

rlw999 wrote:

Gdetrailer wrote:
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.

I see 16 transistors on the board (can't make out the part number in the picture, but they are labeled Q1-Q16 and each has 3 terminals, so I'm assuming they are transistors). So they almost certainly have constant current drivers for the LED's that will likely work well over typical 12V charging system voltage levels.

Transistors and resistors perhaps, but no switching constant current regulator what so ever. You can make a simple series pass "regulator" with a handful of resistors and one transistor but a series pass regulator is very inefficient, wastes a lot of energy as heat and unless you throw in something like a zener diode for creating a rock solid reference voltage that series pass regulator will eventually pass more and more voltage and current..

Those also could be linear 3 lead regulators but that also would be pretty wasteful as they are the same as a linear series pass transistor regulator just without the need for external parts support.. But three lead linear regulators with proper design should be noise decoupled with capacitors on input and output leads which I don't see..

Switching constant current regulators will have more than three leads and require more parts support plus RFI filtering (inductor and capacitor filtering) which is not present on those boards..

They are however cheap enough to "experiment" with but as one review mentioned about 14V perhaps a bit more for top voltage.. RV three stage converters typically will have a bulk charge voltage of 14.4V-14.8V, one or tenths of a volt more can mean life or death to poorly designed LED light assemblies. Once LEDs get near the max current, it takes much less voltage variation to burn them out from over current as they will draw more current at an extreme rate.

For the less than $30 for qty of 20, it isn't much risk other than the need to change the LEDs at a faster rate as they may have a shorter usable life..

Going on 4 years now, and have not changed one.

[CavemanCharlie]

d1h wrote:
If I did get these to try I'm really torn on the color to get. Warm white seems like it might give a little more homey atmosphere inside the RV. Natural white might be a little less yellowish. I'm sort of hesitant of getting the super white in fear of giving the appearance of a sterile operating room.

Could you find some place to order some from that sells a pack of bulbs smaller then 20 ?? If you could just order one or two at a time you could get different intensities and try them out.

In my TT I have double sockets. In one side I put a dimmer bulb (This is the side that comes on first when I slide the switch) Then in the other side I put a brighter one.

[wildtoad]

Some LED’s will interfere with other electronic equipment. I have one in the patio light over the entry door and it interferes with the tv signal from time to time

[rlw999]

Gdetrailer wrote:

Transistors and resistors perhaps, but no switching constant current regulator what so ever. You can make a simple series pass "regulator" with a handful of resistors and one transistor but a series pass regulator is very inefficient, wastes a lot of energy as heat and unless you throw in something like a zener diode for creating a rock solid reference voltage that series pass regulator will eventually pass more and more voltage and current..

No doubt it's not super efficient, but at that price point and size, you're not likely to find a full switching power supply. But since it's drawing around 4W to replace an ~18W bulb, wasting a watt or so as heat is probably not a big deal.

[Gdetrailer]

rlw999 wrote:

Gdetrailer wrote:
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.

I see 16 transistors on the board (can't make out the part number in the picture, but they are labeled Q1-Q16 and each has 3 terminals, so I'm assuming they are transistors). So they almost certainly have constant current drivers for the LED's that will likely work well over typical 12V charging system voltage levels.

Transistors and resistors perhaps, but no switching constant current regulator what so ever. You can make a simple series pass "regulator" with a handful of resistors and one transistor but a series pass regulator is very inefficient, wastes a lot of energy as heat and unless you throw in something like a zener diode for creating a rock solid reference voltage that series pass regulator will eventually pass more and more voltage and current..

Those also could be linear 3 lead regulators but that also would be pretty wasteful as they are the same as a linear series pass transistor regulator just without the need for external parts support.. But three lead linear regulators with proper design should be noise decoupled with capacitors on input and output leads which I don't see..

Switching constant current regulators will have more than three leads and require more parts support plus RFI filtering (inductor and capacitor filtering) which is not present on those boards..

They are however cheap enough to "experiment" with but as one review mentioned about 14V perhaps a bit more for top voltage.. RV three stage converters typically will have a bulk charge voltage of 14.4V-14.8V, one or tenths of a volt more can mean life or death to poorly designed LED light assemblies. Once LEDs get near the max current, it takes much less voltage variation to burn them out from over current as they will draw more current at an extreme rate.

For the less than $30 for qty of 20, it isn't much risk other than the need to change the LEDs at a faster rate as they may have a shorter usable life..

[rlw999]

Gdetrailer wrote:
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.

I see 16 transistors on the board (can't make out the part number in the picture, but they are labeled Q1-Q16 and each has 3 terminals, so I'm assuming they are transistors). So they almost certainly have constant current drivers for the LED's that will likely work well over typical 12V charging system voltage levels.

[Sjm9911]

I prefer the warm ones. The brite ones are very white. I have 2 lights in the kitchen area with the super whites. The rest are the warm ones. And the kids still have incandescents in the bunks, the leds were to bright for them. My small TT has way to many lights lol. The pop up has only 2 lights and we needed the natural or super white ones.

[Yosemite_Sam1]

You might not want the brightest.

At some point, it is annoying.