I found these "puck" style LED's on ebay for a reasonable price. They drew less than 100mA at full brightness.
The nice thing about them is that they already had PWM and other circuitry to make them polarity independent, and constant brightness over the entire operating voltage range of the boat.
I can't remember the part number or seller or anything, but there are a huge number of them being sold an all are very similar in specs and performance.
I also made sure to get the ones that are "warm white". While not as warm as incandescent, they don't have that blueish-white color that typical white LED's have.
I took the guts of the existing overhead lights out and glued the puck in place using 5200. For the head light, I use the existing rubber-covered ON-OFF switch:
It is really pretty bright at 12V or so:
For the V-berth and other cabin lights, I added a two-level dimming function using an ON-OFF-ON toggle switch and an in-line resistor.
As a refresher, the ON-OFF-ON toggle switch has the following characteristics:
So I took an appropriately sized (through some experimentation) current limiting resistor (the size I ended up with didn't seem to affect the PWM function) and put it on one side of the switch:
I used a teak hole plug to fill up the original switch hole and then glued the mini-toggle in through it:
Now I had dimmed settings on all my interior lights, toggle toward the bow for bright, toggle aft for dim. This is the dim setting (as compared to the head photo above). It looks a lot brighter than it is. At this setting it only draws about 20mA:
For one of the lights, I wanted a red option. So for the fixture over the co-pilot seat, I glued a second, red, LED into the fixture. It is a red auto festoon bulb with the ends removed and wires soldered onto it:
This fixture now has two switches. One for dim/bright, and one for red or white.
Here is how that one is hooked up:
And here we are, all red:
This LED stuff is so cheap and fun to play with!!!
The nice thing about them is that they already had PWM and other circuitry to make them polarity independent, and constant brightness over the entire operating voltage range of the boat.
I can't remember the part number or seller or anything, but there are a huge number of them being sold an all are very similar in specs and performance.
I also made sure to get the ones that are "warm white". While not as warm as incandescent, they don't have that blueish-white color that typical white LED's have.
I took the guts of the existing overhead lights out and glued the puck in place using 5200. For the head light, I use the existing rubber-covered ON-OFF switch:
It is really pretty bright at 12V or so:
For the V-berth and other cabin lights, I added a two-level dimming function using an ON-OFF-ON toggle switch and an in-line resistor.
As a refresher, the ON-OFF-ON toggle switch has the following characteristics:
So I took an appropriately sized (through some experimentation) current limiting resistor (the size I ended up with didn't seem to affect the PWM function) and put it on one side of the switch:
I used a teak hole plug to fill up the original switch hole and then glued the mini-toggle in through it:
Now I had dimmed settings on all my interior lights, toggle toward the bow for bright, toggle aft for dim. This is the dim setting (as compared to the head photo above). It looks a lot brighter than it is. At this setting it only draws about 20mA:
For one of the lights, I wanted a red option. So for the fixture over the co-pilot seat, I glued a second, red, LED into the fixture. It is a red auto festoon bulb with the ends removed and wires soldered onto it:
This fixture now has two switches. One for dim/bright, and one for red or white.
Here is how that one is hooked up:
And here we are, all red:
This LED stuff is so cheap and fun to play with!!!
I am so jealous :embarrased 