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Led light install


jgriffn

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Here are a few pics of the led lights I installed a few months ago. The pics aren't the greatest, but at least you can see what I have done. I hadn't cleaned up my mess yet either.

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i want to put LEDs in my boat, as well as in the bimini foe jungle cruises. how do i go about doing this?

Edited by madchild
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martinarcher

I usually stay out till dark every weekend. Last weekend included. I get to use my LED lights often.

Same with us. We use them all the time. I'll have to post up pics of mine before too long. Too busy cutting an grinding right now. Whistling.gif

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I put leds in the cupholders, but you just can't see them good until you put something in there. We are out quite a bit cruising after dark and hanging out. I got all my leds off ebay, they are just individual leds lights.

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martinarcher

I've never bought or used these, but I just found them on Ebay for $18 shipped, in a variety of colors. :rockon:

That's pretty steep and it looks like a low output rope light.

Check these out. They are $6 a foot and I know 12" would do a cup holder. They are crazy bright too. I have my whole boat set-up with the rope light under the gunnel and the seat bases. It rocks and you can run it with an RGB controller that allows you to do any color/brightness/strobe/ etc. My buddy owns the company so I taked to him and he said he could help out the crew since he spends lots of time on my Bu. Thumbup.gif He said use the code "MalibuCrew" to get free shipping on his site when ordering.

Check them out.....

UsLEDSupply Rope Lights

Here's some shots of my boat with the RGB rope light installed. We also installed strips of the RGB rope lights on the trailer guide pylons. We wired the red lead to the brakes and turn signals. The blue is wired to a float switch so when the trailer is backed into the water the pylons go from red to blue (if your foot is on the brake otherwise they simply turn blue). Pretty cool and it made my wife happy as she has trouble seeing the pylons when putting the boat back on the trailer at night. The pylon has a piece of white PVC with a slot cut in it slipped overtop. The LED's are silicon'ed into the slot. We then bought clear PVC and sandblasted the tube to make it diffuse the light a bit. Finished it off with a Malibu logo and wala!

The whole album is here, but here's a few shots.

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MA,

How much are those controllers. I need to do some interior work and would like to add some leds like you did.

They are only $35. Here is the one I used....

http://www.usledsupply.com/shop/rgb-audio-remote-control.html

It is in a nice metal box and includes a RF remote (so you can hide the controller and the remote works anywhere in the boat). I have it tucked up under the dash. It also includes a 1/8" audio jack to hook up to the stereo so the "music" mode works really well with the stereo. It also has a mic on it that pics up the music. I'm using the built in mic at the moment since I haven't crawled back under there to hook up the 1/8" jack. It is a sweet controller. He has lots of them on the site, but that one us my favorite.

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Are you guys out in the dark often? The lights seem like a super cool idea, but I don't think I've ever had my ski boat out in the dark.

We live 2 blocks from the lake, and keep the boat in a slip on the water. So a lot of our Friday & Saturday nights are spent out on the water.

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i installed some of the stuff from superbrightleds and they worked great for the two summers before I sold the boat.

i ended up using all blue lights and they turned out to be really popular with friends and family.

we don't use the boat a ton at night, but several times every summer we would end up staying out long past sundown just crusing along listening to music.

CR

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martinarcher,

Did you use the 12 or 24V? is the only difference the brightness and amp draw (which is so small)?

also, did you use the waterproof roll?

Steve

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martinarcher,

Did you use the 12 or 24V? is the only difference the brightness and amp draw (which is so small)?

also, did you use the waterproof roll?

Steve

Steve,

Right on. I used the waterproof RGB roll of LED's. I used normal 12V off the fuse panel in the boat to run the LED controller found here.

It power/controls the waterproof RGB (Red.Green/Blue) LED strips with standard 12V and allows you to fully control the brightness, color, mode of the lights via the remote control. It also has a mode to go with the beat of the music via a 1/8" input jack fro the stereo or a built in microphone.

With that controller the strips are capable of full brightness and draw very little current. The entire boat is less than 3 amps at 12V at 100% brightness on white (all three colors on).

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If you looks at the post above you can see I slipped a piece of PVC over the pylon. The PVC had a slot cut in it that is wide enough for a strip of RGB LED's to fit into. I then wired the LED's into the brake/turn lights on the trailer and the float switch. Since I used a single piece of RGB I had to wire the +12 VDC off the red leg of the LED strip to the brake/turn +12V and the +12VDC off the blue leg to the running light power. I then frosted a clear piece of PVC pipe by sandblasting it to diffuse the light a bit and painted the Malibu logo on it to finish it off.

The challenge was to have the +12VDC off the brake lights "break" when the float switch activates so you get blue when the trailer hits the water. If I didn't do this I would have gotten purple when the trailer was backed into the water (blue + red). We used a couple relays to do this. If you just want a single color on the trailer pylon you could buy a solid color strip of LED's or buy two solid color strips which would make wiring much easier.

Here's where I got the LED strips (I'm working on a group buy soon)....

http://www.usledsupply.com/shop/led-rope-lights.html?SID=37ddc401f420d8e3d5f7a4831eafb8f9

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Few more pics.....

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Sweet, I must have missed this when you added the pics. The Skier doesn't even compare anymore. No one will ever remember the Skier if you keep making these changes, or maybe I better so modifications.:biggrin:

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Sweet, I must have missed this when you added the pics. The Skier doesn't even compare anymore. No one will ever remember the Skier if you keep making these changes, or maybe I better so modifications.:biggrin:

I'm just trying to bring the Setter up to where I had the Skier. Next are transom LED's. Rockon.gif I need to wait for a group buy though cause they are dang expensive!

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