LED lights and radio interferance

Cheap LEDs are notorious for generating Radio Frequency interference.
Only solution is to replace the offending bulbs.

The LED assys that have a regulator chip in them so that they will work within a DC VOLTAGE RANGE will cause RFI INTERFERENCE. These are within FCC RULES and somewhere on the BILL OF SALE you may find a statement saying this unit may interfere with radio's and HDTVs...

This is not new information -

My first batch of LED lights would completely BLANK OUT my HDTV signals when using the BATWING ANTENNA fir OTA Digital TV SIgnals. Also Interfered with the WX RADIO, POLICE SCANNERs, and my HAM RADIO big time.

Have heard of some bathroom LED lights would take out the BEDROOM HDTV when on CABLE CONNECTION...

My fix was to drop the REGULATOR TYPE LED ASSYs and just use the cheap $4.99 LED BOARDS from EBAY CHINA. They work fine for me...

This is a good reason to only buy one and then you check out and see if it is going to work for you. I bought a whole set and had to give away $150 worth of LED lights.

Roy Ken

As mentioned, this is a rather well own problem with self regulated LED's. The only ones I am aware of that have paid attention to RF suppression is Starlights, and RV LED Lights (his new startup company), both owned by Gregg Wilson who is a design engineer and got on this as soon as it was noticed to be a problem. I've personally tested his prototypes and the RFI is almost non-existent. The 1st line of "naked bulbs" shown on the site are VERY quiet. You get what you pay for...

When I built my scarelight LED (LEDZILLA), with 12 1W LED's, my regulator is outboard and well filtered. It makes zero noise.

I replaced all the lights with LEDs. Same batch of bulbs. Only one of the two in the head caused static. I found the one causing the interference by removing them one at a time throughout the camper. I replaced the noisy one with another from the same group and no noise. These were about $2 each from Amazon. That was a year ago and no problems since.

SCVJeff wrote:
As mentioned, this is a rather well own problem with self regulated LED's. The only ones I am aware of that have paid attention to RF suppression is Starlights ...

Interesting. I first discovered this RFI problem with the camper radio when I installed a number of different Starlight LED bulbs in our previous Spree ... tried them also in our current Freedom Express with the same results. I then ordered a batch of "cheap, Chinese" LEDs which so many disdain but which I'm now running in our FE with no RFI problems at all. Meanwhile those expensive Starlights are gathering dust in my parts bin. :M

Probably the early ones, they were some of the first with onboard regulators.