Flashing Interior Light Solution

[tdf-texas]

Originally Posted by jxoco

Is that a LM7812 that you are using?

Sorry so late with this reply - I used the LM2940CT-12 chips. The LM7812 has a higher voltage drop that would limit the lights working at lower battery voltages.

Here is the circuit I used and pics of the install. I installed the regulator chips in Feb. 2019 and have had no flickering or failures since. Of course, the wire connections were twisted together, soldered, and heat shrinked.

[adrianp12]

Perhaps an adjacent issue, but today I noticed ALL interior and exterior lights flickering sans bathroom. I tried messing around with a number of possible factors (fuse, battery vs. shore, water pump on/off, inverter on/off, different shore power cord). Oddly the only thing that managed to stop it was the heater coming on. Didn't matter if shorepower is plugged in or if it's off the battery.

Anyone know why and if there is a fix for this?

[Defenestrator]

That's odd, and even odder that the heater coming on mattered. Maybe pull the fuse for the furnace and see if that stops the flickering? That'd at least narrow it down. Probably something on the 12VDC side of things is pulling power in a very bursty way, and you'll just have to toggle stuff until you can figure out what it is.

Some of the Escapes (2018ish) also came with LEDs that didn't handle charging voltage well. They were basically built for "12V +/- 10%" instead of the 10-15V range most "12V" car-adjacent stuff is built for. If the lights aren't blinking in unison it could be this, especially if it's just the 3 larger "main" lights and not smaller ones.

[adrianp12]

Originally Posted by Defenestrator

Some of the Escapes (2018ish) also came with LEDs that didn't handle charging voltage well. They were basically built for "12V +/- 10%" instead of the 10-15V range most "12V" car-adjacent stuff is built for. If the lights aren't blinking in unison it could be this, especially if it's just the 3 larger "main" lights and not smaller ones.

Perhaps this is it. I was in full sun on the solar panel when this was happening, and now as I type this, nothing has changed except the sun set behind the house and no flickering...or would it have more to do with the shore power charging the batteries? I did have flickering on and off of shore power earlier.

I'm pretty novice on the 12V system/battery/solar/charging system. Maybe my next experiment will be to put some cardboard over the solar panel and see if that changes things! I should also maybe watch the Go Power stats on my phone next time and make observations.

[Defenestrator]

Could be. The GoPower default bulk charge for flooded lead-acid batteries seems to be 14.1V and I don't think it has a desulfation mode (which would usually involve short higher-voltage spikes).

It could also be a load causing the problem. It was only a single light, but I've seen a cheap laptop charger plugged into the 12V port cause flickering in the same circuit.