LED dome lights

[Iowa Dave]

Since retiring I’ve never noticed my demeanor or anyone else’s changing at any particular time of the day. I have continued to note that the girls still get prettier around closing time but at this state in life there ain’t much I could do about it. I do use the term coyote ugly once in a while.
Iowa Dave

[Starbrightsteve]

Does anyone know if the Facon light fixture mentioned early in this thread is a good replacement that is voltage regulated?

[tdf-texas]

Originally Posted by Starbrightsteve

Does anyone know if the Facon light fixture mentioned early in this thread is a good replacement that is voltage regulated?

The Facon LED fixture is not voltage regulated.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...3YHOQFM2H&th=1

[CarinaPDX]

As long as you are looking at $13 fixtures you can expect problems. The regulators that I use, before buying fixtures or LEDs, are $18 retail. The Chinese sell cheap constant-current regulators for a few dollars; I would expect them to work well other than a high probability of EMI to any radios. Quality marine fixtures with good regulators start at about $80, but are also usually metal and may additionally have red night lights. Basically you get what you pay for.

I don't have a trailer, but am looking down the road a few years to when I swallow the hook and am trying to educate myself to the RV world. My conclusion from this thread is that I will probably either order an Escape without lights, or have them install ones of my choice. If I bought used I would at a minimum change out the innards of the lamps, but more likely replace - these plastic fixtures just don't appeal aesthetically to me. YMMV

[Brian B-P]

Originally Posted by CarinaPDX

My conclusion from this thread is that I will probably either order an Escape without lights, or have them install ones of my choice. If I bought used I would at a minimum change out the innards of the lamps, but more likely replace - these plastic fixtures just don't appeal aesthetically to me.

Leaving out light fixtures but keeping the wiring points might be an issue for Escape's production process; they would need to leave blunt-cut or capped wires (if at the end of a run) or loops (if in an intermediate location). They are willing to leave loops for owner installations in cabinets (they call these "drops"), so they might do it in locations which normally have a light fixture. Those light fixtures are not expensive, so it would be reasonable to just take the standard installation and change the fixtures yourself, selling or giving away the original fixtures.

[Fox hunt]

or wait until you have an issue and then replace- i have had no issues yet.

[Dave Walter]

I am a bit surprised that so many seem to have had issues with their LED lights. Both of my 2013 Escape trailers have LED lights and all of them work fine after nearly 6 years of operation.

[tdf-texas]

Originally Posted by Dave Walter

I am a bit surprised that so many seem to have had issues with their LED lights. Both of my 2013 Escape trailers have LED lights and all of them work fine after nearly 6 years of operation.

Just rub it in, Dave! On the newer trailers, Escape installed "made in China" LED lighting that can't handle voltages over 12v. That's the ones that are failing.

[wetzk]

I think it depends how often the lights are on while plugged into AC power.
Or it may be ours and some others power converters might have a higher initial voltage.

Or it could just be crappy LED chips.
I marked the good LED chips on one of the larger bad lights then using my hot air rework station removed them and using aluminum foil to make mask managed to remove the bad ones and replace them on 4 lights.
Hopefully I will not need them but it's nice to have spares.
What was even nicer was I had a 3 year old tube of solder paste I stuck in the freezer. I warmed it up and tested on the bad light fixture and the solder was still good. Normally the stuff goes bad in less than a year even when stored in the fridge.

[tdf-texas]

Originally Posted by wetzk

I think it depends how often the lights are on while plugged into AC power.
Or it may be ours and some others power converters might have a higher initial voltage.

Don't forget - some of us have solar chargers that put out 15.8 volts when in equalization mode. That may have something to do with the LED lights going out.

[CarinaPDX]

Originally Posted by tdf-texas

Don't forget - some of us have solar chargers that put out 15.8 volts when in equalization mode. That may have something to do with the LED lights going out.

Ouch! NEVER equalize batteries while they are driving pretty much anything. 15.8V is waay too far above a nominal 12V to be a good idea to run through the circuits. Then again, invest in gel batteries from Sonnenschein or Deka (East Penn) and stop equalizing.

[tdf-texas]

Originally Posted by CarinaPDX

Ouch! NEVER equalize batteries while they are driving pretty much anything. 15.8V is waay too far above a nominal 12V to be a good idea to run through the circuits. Then again, invest in gel batteries from Sonnenschein or Deka (East Penn) and stop equalizing.

Interstate’s recommendation for absorption voltage is 15.3 volts, and the equalization voltage is 15.6V. With a temperature compensated charger, the voltage can go higher.

It's either a fully charged battery with longer life or doing something about the high volts hitting the devices - I'm going with voltage regulating the devices.

[caddoster]

We have one flickering dome light and replaced it, so far everything is good. I took apart the flickering light and noted there are 12 LEDs inside but they appeared to be in groups of 3s, on ours three are flickering and the rest (9) are running just fine. This indicates that there are 4 "drivers" each driving 3 LEDs and they are independent. I messed with the light a bit more and the flickering three eventually don't lit up anymore, but the middle one of the three is ~5.6-ish Volt while the two on each side has 0 volt.. all the running ones has a running voltage of 3.5-ish Volt.. I believe flickering is the result of component defect packaged inside the driver, and if over voltage is an issue then some drivers are packaged with better components than others..

[wetzk]

Originally Posted by tdf-texas

Interstate’s recommendation for absorption voltage is 15.3 volts, and the equalization voltage is 15.6V. With a temperature compensated charger, the voltage can go higher.

It's either a fully charged battery with longer life or doing something about the high volts hitting the devices - I'm going with voltage regulating the devices.

I found the thread about the Maxxfan.
http://www.escapeforum.org/forums/f9...tml#post237703


You may want to regulate that too. If you can do it like I did that works well with the buck boost DC DC converter.

[Brian B-P]

Originally Posted by tdf-texas

On the newer trailers, Escape installed "made in China" LED lighting that can't handle voltages over 12v.

I would be very surprised if the earlier LED lighting units were made anywhere but in China, or another Asian country. I don't think the country of origin is the issue.

[wetzk]

I pulled the light strip that I removed the LEDs from to repair the other four from the trash and sanded the conformal coating off. It is a simple 2 transistor setup with Q2 feeding the power transistor Q1. They are tied together in groups of three with the positive being fed from D1 to one side of each group and the negative for each group going to the collector on Q1.
Here is a very quick drawing of the basic circuit, I did not include the whole circuit but it is a very basic device that unfortunately allows voltage to rise. So weak LED chips will fail. Since the 3 are in series any that fail affect the whole group of three.

[Eggscape]

And I would expect the higher the voltage the higher the heat of the components. I still think as explained in post #56 that a proper coating of thermal grease will go a long way in pulling that heat away. However anything made for 12 volts is not generally designed to last at voltages over 14 volts.
I was going to do a test with one of the lights I have removed from my 2018. I was thinking of running it at 14 volts with a proper coat of thermal grease and see how long it would last. But if your talking 15 and above volts...it not going to last.
At that voltage it might last if you added another led to each bank but regulation is the way to go.
At anything over 15 volts I would be worried about 16 volt capacitors in the fan, heater, radio, tv and fridge.

[tdf-texas]

Modifying the LED light circuit to include a voltage regulator should fix this. Attached is my design for the LED light.

For the Maxxfan, adding a 12v voltage stabilizer should help.

Since we can't change the fact that the battery voltage is going to be higher at times than the devices are rated, we have to modify the device circuits or just replace as they burn out.

[tdf-texas]

Originally Posted by Brian B-P

I would be very surprised if the earlier LED lighting units were made anywhere but in China, or another Asian country. I don't think the country of origin is the issue.

I'm sure that almost all LED lighting is now made in China. "Made in China" was more a lamentation - stuff used to be better made. When I was a kid, it was "made in Japan" as a derogatory statement about the quality of something. Now I buy Toyota because of the quality. Who knows, maybe China will get better at making stuff.

[Micheal K]

We haven’t had any problems yet with any of our led dome lights, but we probably aren’t using them when higher voltages are present since we rarely have shore power and probably don’t use lighting when solar is charging.

This discussion has made me consider adding an inline resistor to each light though since I find them a bit too bright anyways and it should help prevent failures. Agree that voltage regulation is the best solution but it is quite a bit more effort.