Davepar

Davepar

Well Known Member
Has anybody found any good LED cabin lighting?

I bought some LEDs from www.superbrightleds.com to play with. They look pretty good, but I'm not sure a single LED would provide enough light. I'm thinking about kludging together a few LEDs with a resistor, and mounting it in one of the interior covers.

Spruce sells some lights for $60 or $140, which is crazy. The LEDs at superbright cost about $1.50 each, and the mounting bezel is $.25. A 3 LED light would cost less than $10.

Dave
 
I'm looking at it too. Walter shows a "Luxeon Star" LED on his website. However, I know nothing about it. Looks like he uses only one and mentions it's super bright.

Luxeon? Star Power Light Sources are the world's brightest LEDs offering up to 120 lumens per single source and available in a variety of configurations. Power and superb lumen maintenance, far exceeding other standard and high-flux LEDs, are hallmarks of Luxeon Star.


Lumileds website

Here's a picture from hist website.
 
Yep, Luxeons are the only way to go. They are what I use in my Nav Lights. For interior lighting just one 3 watt Luxeon Star Lambertian LXHL-LW3C with a Power Puck using a heatsink is just crazy. Actually a 1 watt one is plenty.

-Jeff
 
So a 3W is overkill? Could you put it on a dimmer and say turn it down in flight, if necessary?

What kind of heatsink is needed and where do you get it? I'm assuming you only need a heatsink for anything greater than 1W?

What's the best place to get these units?

Sorry for all the questions...

Thanks,
Scott
 
From what I've read, you can't use just any dimmer on LEDs. It has to be a dimmer that pulses the output, such as the one from Flight Data Systems, http://www.fdatasystems.com/LC_40.htm.

Since I answered one question, I'll add some more. :cool:

The Luxeons look cool, but aren't they overkill for this application? I just need a little bit of light to find stuff in the cabin or baggage area on a dark night. Those Luxeons sound like they'll blind a person, or at the very least kill your night vision.

What's the advantage to using the PowerPuck over plain old resistors? It seems that with a fairly constant 14 volts, it would be easy to pick an appropriately sized resistor.

This site has some useful info on LEDs, including a calculator for the resistor size needed for one to many LEDs.
http://led.linear1.org/
 
You can use a dimmer on the Power Puck. As long as you just reduce the input voltage. Then the 3 watt one would do fine. You can get Computer Processor heatsinks at most stores that sell computer parts such as Frys and then cut it to a smaller size. Then glue it on with thermal epoxy. They will run fine at about 130 dregrees without issue. You can get all these parts from ledsupply.com[/COLOR]]LEDSUPPLY.com and like Scott mentioned above you can get specs on any of them from Lumileds.com. The 1 and 3 watt Luxeon Star Hex and Star/C are the easiest to mount and connect. I prefer the Star Hex since you can easily solder wires right on it. Figure spending about $40 for the Power Puck and a Star with shipping. The heat sink is about $5. Its pricey for just a light but they are neato and will never burn out and its a modern day gadget. :) What could be funner?? !!

-Jeff
 
Jeff... how many MA for the powerpuck - 350 or 700 if you go with a 3W?

Also looking at other places like boat or car supply places. Maybe something like this?

Hella LED Oval Flushmount Lamps Long lasting light with little power consumption.

These LED oval flushmount lamps from Hella are suitable for step lighting, interior or exterior courtesy lighting, and lighting for storage areas. These long lasting, waterproof, and shockproof lights are computer-designed to provide an even light output. Easily installed, these lights are pre-wired with patented cable sealing, and have a 100,000-hour service life.

And here's a link to the Hella website... these might work?
 
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LED cabin lighting

This is a very fast moving area. Every time I go to the auto section of the supermarket there are more LED lighting options available, and the price has gone down. The Hella products look great, and they seem to be reasonably priced. I've seen individual LEDs sold for decorative lighting for about 10 USD here in Switzerland. I guess they are probably about 5 USD in the US, if not, they will get there. I'm kind of waiting until the last second before I buy my cockpit lighting since the state-of-the-art is changing so rapidly.
 
It's funny to see "state-of-the-art" mentioned about LEDs. The things have been around for 30 years? But you're right. The LED lighting market is booming right now. I expect in another 10 years the kids will be asking, "What's a light bulb?"
 
I've been a big LED buff since Radio Shack started carrying them. To the best of my knowledge, one of the first uses of LEDs was in the Princess phone to illuminate the buttons. Here is a short description of the changeover in the mid-seventies. I'm sure most of you folks remember these cool phones when they came out.

"The Princess phone requires a separate A.C. line-powered transformer to power the light inside the phone. The Trimline telephone required a wall transformers at first. The round button Trimline touch-tone model and rotary model of the same period used incandescent lamps powered by external transformers. When Western Electric went to the square buttons on the Trimline, they changed over to line powered LED's. Incandescent bulbs require too much power and too high a voltage drop to be powered from the CO. LEDs overcame these problems but they weren't commercially available until the mid seventies. "
 
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Slider Rollbar Luxeon

Hello,

I am going to use a 1W Luxeon hex star for panel lighting. So far, the best place to mount it appears to be in the rollbar. Has anyone done this? Any tips you can share?

I will need to put a hood on it to limit the directions the light can travel in, but it does a great job of flooding the panel when dimmed and lights up the whole cabin when turned up high.

Pete
 
LED's

To Pete Howell: Where do you find a 1W Luxeon? Sounds pretty interesting and might like to consider it for my 8. Thanks for your post. Any photos? Bill Dicus
 
Hi Bill

I ordered this:

http://www.ledsupply.com/k5350.html

Ordered the pot and 3- 1 watt lambertian stars with the BuckPuck. Works really well with great flood coverage.

Here is a pic of one 1 watt lambertian star mounted on the rollbar lighting the entire panel. Holla back if you have questions.



Cheers,

Pete
 
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Gooseneck LED

I just have a couple of night flights in my RV-8 so far. Enough to realize my initial cabin lighting wasn't so great. So I added some red LED arrays under the side rails to light the console switches, fuel valve, and thottle lever areas.

http://www.customdynamics.com/flex_led_array.htm

I also replaced the white incandescent gooseneck lamp I had with this one:

http://littlite.com/product.php?id=77

It's nice because it's LED and switches between red and white light.

Both are on separate dimmers and have a nice even flood type light. No hot spots.
 
boatus

I've used some LEDs from boatus in the whaler. small, good light, even made in USA. found, oddly enough, in the lighting section. may use the same type in the rv, as they are easy to mount and provide a soft, wide light.
 
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