Lights, camera...content

My Macgregor 19 powersailer was built back in the days of incandescent lightbulbs. You remember them, right? Today we've got higher efficiency LEDs -- in our houses, in our cars, at work. Time for an upgrade? Yes, indeed.

Here's an option that's becoming more available and cheap -- LED strip lighting. The big box store had a surprising selection of choices -- soft white, multi-color, short, long. I decided to spend a little more to experiment with the color option and chose an 8-foot system. Here's what I bought...

In addition to the light strip, a pushbutton remote, controller module and plug-in power wall wart are included. The remote control is an IR system, like a TV, and the controller module has a sensor on short flex cord. The important thing for us is that the light strip operates on 12 volts DC. And even better, the 110VAC-to-12VDC converter has a commonly used plug/jack. I found a plug that fit the controller's jack sitting in my junk box.

I mounted the 8-foot long light strip in the Macgregor on the port side, which has a continuous mounting surface. There is a "head" (for a very small person?) on the starboard side. Here are some photos of the strip light powered by the stock AC wallwart (in addition to these, there are lots of other color combos and "effects" possible -- very entertaining).

The next step is to add the connection to a 12V battery. How much power does rig this use? Here's what I measured in amps (and you all know how to figure out how long your battery will run it, right? Maybe I'll address this in another post):

White, full brightness            1.28 amps

White, lowest brightness      0.13

Red, lowest brightness         0.06

Red, full brightness               0.65

Blue, full brightness              0.22

Green, full brightness           0.57

What does this tell us? This strip light is very frugal with battery consumption, and I can operate it "full white" for a looong time from a fully-charged Group 27 battery (with 40 usable amp-hours of storage capacity). Decreasing the brightness to the lowest white setting reduces the current by a factor of ten to 130 milliamps. And in night-time mode (low red) the current is half of that -- a miserly 60 milliamps. As a point of reference, my Garmin Echomap 44DV GPS consumes about 0.5 amps, according to its spec sheet. Almost forgot...you don't get something for nothing. The system is, of course, always "on" unless you unplug it from the power source. But the "idle" current is pretty low; I measured 3.8 milliamps, which is probably less than the self-discharge of the battery.

The light strip has a clear conformal coating so the LEDs and conductors are not exposed. I added a 2-amp in-line fuse near the battery to protect the power cord and light in the unlikely event that there is a problem someday. If the strip is too long, you can easily shorten it by cutting it at one of the marked places. And it comes with a pressure-sensitive adhesive strip on the backside. Once I figure out the best location in the boat, I'll rip the adhesive backing off, plug the light into 12V power, and that will be that. All ready for long-term on-water testing, once the coast is clear.