LED Lighting Project Help

[ApacheENG]

Hi Guys,

I have very little experience with LED lighting. I am working on a home project. I would like to make an open source fishing/boat light that are similar to the "Nuclieye Extreme".


These are my desired specifications:
UV LEDs & Green Light LEDs -110-130 degree viewing angle. Probably planning on using a blend of diffused + wide angle LED to get good coverage. 125-175 lumens.
White LED for illuminating the boat interior.


Questions I have:
How do you go about sealing/waterproofing the LEDs?
Which style of LED's do you recommend?

[ferdousme]

sounds good. your specifications are amazing . thanks for posting this post.

thanks
mrosupply

[Carter]

it very much depends on the quality .LEDs will provide more light using less power. LEDs are also claimed to have very much longer life-spans.LED is cheapest option for battery operated option. Because led can run direct from battery's dc power and also saves energy for long battery life span. LED are more efficient than CFL.

[ToreyBayo]

Although LEDs are available in wide range, but it is difficult to achieve this angle for this luminous.
Also LED do not consume much power, as you are also aware with this thing.
But some high power LEDs are available int the market
Also you can easily find the waterproof models.

[YorkshireDave1]

Try changing the design so the surface the lamps sit on is curved. That will give you better spread ad negate the narrow beam of output of most std LEDs. Google is your friend as there are now many lenses available too.

In terms of output, it is better to run higher powered lamps undervoltage by a bit then run lamps on or over voltage. The higher the voltage applied the shorter their useful life. So run say a 12v 1w cree at 11volts.

Lastly, no matter what the manufacturers say, LED performance drops off very quickly unless you pay for good quality items. Ask the manufacturer for the output vs hours graph and you will see that although they will still be lit after many thousands of hours they are far from useful at that stage. This is not to say LEDs are bad - far from it. It just means you have to be well aware that they too have pitfalls that you have to design for and are NOT a panecea for all lighting design ills.

HTH