LED Lighting Interferrence

colbysmith

colbysmith

Active member
Recently one of our fellow C-brats emailed me the following link. Thought it would be worthwhile posting here. I do have LED cabin and nav lights. Did the check mentioned in this article with no problem. (Turned on all my lights at the same time.) Of course my LED lighting only involves 4 small cabin lights, and 3 nav lights. The Anchor Mast light being the closest one to my VHF antenna's. I suspect this is probably only a problem for larger ships with a lot more high powered lighting. Otherwise, both my VHF's and my AIS appear to work well. (When I speak up, with regards to my older radio. :mrgreen: ) Colby

http://gcaptain.com/u-s-coast-guard...g-interfering-vhf-fm-radio-and-ais-reception/
 
I have all LED lights. I've never noticed any problems with them. However, we almost never use the lights and the radio at the same time.
 
Here is the reply I sent to the e-mail which I also received.

This is a well known problem. There are a number of things which can be done—one is to twist the wires together from the power supply to the LED.

2 use ferrite beads on the power leads

3. A small capacitor between the leads

4. Some suppliers use RF radiation free LED’s—Such as “Superbright” bulbs. The radiation is from the driver circuit on the micro circuit boards. Better and higher cost LED’s will cause far less problem.

I noted the problem with some ham radio gear when LED's first became popular. I have always been able to get rid of any interference. My current boat is 100% LED lighting.
 
I converted to all LED lights (except an aft facing cockpit flood light)several years back and have not had a problem, but I was aware of the possibilities and looked specifically for non-RFI LED lights. I think all except the anchor/all around are from SuperBright.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon
 
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