Monday 25 April 2011

new lights



Here, if only for my benefit, are my finally installed LED lights, replacing the 8w flourescents (the boat's original fittings, I'd forgotten, were two tubes, so 16W). These, by contrast, are around 1W each, but give a soft, warm, even light. Not as bright as their predecessors, but, the swivel LED MR16 light (now over the kitchen) can usefully be pointed into most corners of the boat for a bit of spot illumination.

Anyway, as mentioned previously the wood has been routed out to take the switch & voltage regulator (LM2940) - mounting screws are hidden under the LED disc thingy. It's taken me ages to get around to sorting these, but I'm please with the result. One of the problems with the MR16 LED lights is the depth required to mount them; these get around that completely, and also are nowhere near as concentrated.

Having recently rewired the bits & pieces of solar panel on the roof after finding that one one of the three non-boken ones was actually connected, total lighting load is now less than these panels were providing the other day, & that's into pretty much full batteries already. I keep meaning to post about my cunning combined volt/ammeter; another time.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

They are de-light-ful.
C x

Neil Corbett said...

Cunning voltmeter / ammeter eh! I'm in the market for one of them to see how my solar panel is doing, although empirically it's doing very well it seems

Halfie said...

Cunningly concealed fixing screws too, by the look of it. Are they under (above) the lamp unit?

Did you have to heatsink the voltage regulator?

Looking forward to details of the voltmeter/ammeter.

Simon said...

John - yep, the lights are mounted using small screws which are hidden under the removable silver surround; the block mounting screws are hidden under the light unit itself..

Neil, it's really just a small switchable digital voltameter/ammeter, I will try to document it at some point, but gives me a good idea of what the batteries & panels are doing. Is this some kind of admission that your Gobbometer isn't perfect? ;-)