Comments on: LED Anchor Lights

By: Caesar

Caesar — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:12:24 +0000

Hi Davey, Thanks for your comment.
As it seems you now realise, the reason your LEDs kept burning out is because of the variable supply voltage. When the voltage is too high, too much current flows through the LEDs and damages or destroys them.
LEDs need a current regulator to work properly. Many prebuilt LED lights have current or voltage regulators built in, or if you are making your own lights it’s easy to use a component such as the LM317T to regulate the current.

By: Davey

Davey — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:19:12 +0000

Hello, I tried some cheap LED bulbs in my car as short trips in winter drains the battery. In the sidelights and number plate lights the LEDs were not a success as they kept burning out. The four festoon LED bulbs in the doors (door open lights) are lasting well. These bulbs never get full voltage because the doors are shut when the engine is revving hard. These bulbs just use a series resistor for current control but this is not a good way to do it. ( Wiki “Constant Current Source”) I’ve known about this problem for quite a while and constant current drive is how Hella of Germany do it. I seem to remember seeing that there are now universal LED lights available, they work OK on 12 volts for cars and 24 volts for bus and truck! According to Hella a lot of alternators create a voltage spike when they kick in. Allegedly this spike is very detrimental to the LED bulbs that just use a series resistor. Best regards from Davey.

By: Willy Herold

Willy Herold — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:23:25 +0000

Only a week ago I received my two FAUTASIs from BEBI. My experiences with them were like the ones described above: Nice e-mailing, immediate shipping (to a yacht with a VERY complicated customs address, many companies cant cope with), timely delivery, postcard and newspaper. Some more friendly e-mails. The product is sweet and technically perfect. The resulting cabin light on my 32′er is more than adequate and pleasantly warm white.
Those guys dont mind dealing with thrifty yachties and send their goods everywhere. If I was more into soldering I’d look into more cabin lightings to replace 5W bulbs.
At the mast head I have an extremely expensive tricolour/anchor combination from Blue Water Light. Looks very sturdy and is watertight. At this price I would have expected at least tinned marine grade wire, which it has not.
BEBI are definitely the people to deal with, and one day I sail there and visit them
Willy Herold “UNDENE”

By: Jill Dickin Schinas

Jill Dickin Schinas — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:16:45 +0000

Thank-you for your comments, Michael. Yes, it’s true; I should have mentioned the fact that the UltraLEDs, being brighter, do use more power than Bebi’s lights.

Caesar has also corrected the article to make it clear that LEDs require an exact current, rather than an exact voltage. (No, please don’t expand further; it would all go way over my head!)

The new cabin lights look very interesting and i can see that Caesar will shortly be talking us into another purchase…

Right now we’re in the middle of a dispute with UltraLEDs. We ordered £90 worth of lights and they didn’t arrive, but despite the fact that the company say on their website that they will re-send any lost orders within 15 days, they are refusing to do so until they have been refunded by the Post Office. And they say that the Post Office “usually finds an excuse not to make the refund”…! Bearing in mind that the parcel had to be signed for this seems somewhat unlikely.

UltraLEDs also say that they are not going to send things to yachts anymore because “it’s not cost effective”.

As I mentioned in the article, this is not the first time we have had a problem with UltraLEDs, and we know that other people have also had problems. We definitely won’t be doing business with them again.

For comparison, we have also recently had a problem with one of our Bebi interior lights. Caesar wrote to the company explaining that, for sometime now, it had seemed rather dim. He finally realised that the outer ring of lights was not working and so he wrote to ask whether this might be a fault in his wiring. This is the reply that we received, a few hours later:
“Nope, not a wiring problem, a short has developed in one of the LEDs. Give us a ship-to address, and we’ll get a replacement off to you.”
And this, for a product which we have been using daily (or rather, nightly) for almost 2 years. I know who we will be shopping with in the future!

By: Bebi Electronics

Bebi Electronics — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:07:19 +0000

Thank you for the article! One small correction is that LEDs are current, not voltage devices. It sounds trivial, but it really isn’t. If you’d like me to expound a bit further on all of this, I can, just don’t want to bore you.

The ‘flat’ (SMT) devices [as used on UltraLEDs' lights] aren’t exactly what they seem to be at first glance, or we would be using them.
First, their light output per energy consumption isn’t any greater than the devices that we’re using, there is just more light generated from fewer devices. In fact, although the difference is trivial in any sort of meaningful measurement, the Nichia DS series of devices [ie. the ones used by Bebi] are still the most efficient LED devices in converting electrical energy to light energy in production.

Luxeon [the first manufacturer of the flat / SMT devices] specifically does not recommend using their devices in exposed locations.

We require that the leads are silver-plated copper, instead of the more common tin plated steel. [This makes the units more water resistant and so more suited to the marine environment.]

I consider that we build lights for rough usage, and have carved a niche for ourselves doing so. I don’t think that we could ever hope to compete with China with high volume production.

We do also make a light which is designed to replace the typical 12 volt fluorescent light. http://www.bebi-electronics.com/fautasi.html . On this page, I have some comparison pics of a 8 watt fluoro and our products. Don’t look at how bright the light looks, look at the work surface and the detail of the surface. None of the pics are touched, and they were all shot with the same camera settings (although the warm white and the dimmer photos were taken at a later date).

Michael