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Home Forums Mods Wanted LED lighting puzzle

LED lighting puzzle
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10:24 am
June 1, 2011


kjackson7_93

Mod Newbie

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I am (slowing) converting the lighting in my 5th wheel over to LED's and have run into a couple of isses that are quite puzzling.

1) I bought a couple of LED lights to replace the original 12 volt bulbs in the bulit in fixtures.  They work in every fixture in the RV except the ones over the bed.  I've measured the voltage to the fixtures and its the same as every other fixture that works.  There is same 'resistance' on both types of bulbs so I know there is contact being made.  The only thing I can think of is that the polarity is wrong in the fixtures above the bed.  Could that make them not work?

2) I have a 120 volt fixture with a lamp that only works when plugged into the inverter.  The inverter displays how many watts are being pulled at any given time.  I unplug everything so the inverter show 0 watts.  I then put in a new LED 1.3 watt “bulb”.  The inverter show close to 100 watts being used. I tried a compact floresent and the wattage show about 110 watts.  I thought it might simply be a decimal issue but when I plug my laptop in it shows the correct wattage of around 60 watts.  With my laptop and the floresent, it show 170 watts.

Any help or advise on either if these puzzles would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

9:51 pm
June 4, 2011


OldSchoolGeek

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1) Yes, reversed polarity could definitely make the LED's not work, where an incandescent wouldn't care.  To find out for sure would take a multimeter (really cheap at Harbor Freight, not quite so cheap but not expensive at Walmart) or a test light, the center contact should have voltage and the outer casing at ground.  Fixing it would require either finding where the crossover happened (probably inside the wall and not very accessible), or dismounting the fixture and re-crossing it (cut and splice the wires the other way).

2) Compact fluorescents and LED's set up for AC both change the voltage and frequency (CF's step up the voltage and speed up the cycles, LED's step it down and convert it to DC).  This can create feedback that could be messing up the monitor in the inverter.  If it has a DC Amps indicator, this should be an accurate reading of actual power draw (and easier to back into the capacity rating of your batteries).

–Dave

8:35 am
June 6, 2011


kjackson7_93

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Thanks so much for the reply!

I will try and reverse the polarity on the two fixtures in question.  Its also nice to know that I can use my new LED and CF bulbs without fearing that I'm running the batteries down.
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