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Perimeter L.E.D lighting

PDX Hosedragger said:
In my "humble yet deadly accurate" opinion pointing them down will give out the highest yield output. Shining inwards does just that. You will get a narrow band of light on the skirting above the pontoon. Pointing them downwards, according to my calculations, should illuminate the entire tops half of the tube and most of the skirt.

Buckman my led strips came with 3m tape already attached. Phew!
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Mine had the strips as well, however I have worked with 10 of these strips previously and found the 3M was not always reliable. Due to the nature and placement of these on the pontoon I wanted to make sure that they would adhere until intentionally removed so used the additional adhesive. ( :huh: hmmm now just so the saying about best intentions going awry doesn't plague me!)

Stacey
 
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With the information found in this forum and an afternoon off work, I now have my side LED lights installed and working ! It was fairly easy and enjoyable to do. A few minor scrapes on the knuckles and fingers and chips out of my skull from moving around under the boat and around the trailer, I managed to survive !

I have placed a couple of pics in my gallery and a brief description on how it was done. As soon as darkness comes I will add another pic.

Thanks PDX and Link as some your advice and pokes helped !
 
Aww yeeah! It looks like you attached yours all the way at the top, to your decking? I'm not able to, as there are sections of cross member and trim that would obscure the led's of I did that. I'm going about 1/2" up from the bottom of the edge trim on the angle.

Looks great! Are they RGB or just blue?
 
PDX they are just Blue. I considered the RGB, but decide not.

The starboard side was a real pain to install because of the wiring harness in the way. That almost took as much to,e to manipulate as the rest of the job itself. Tomorrow is another day booked off to install my LED cup holders and windlass anchor. I hope to take the Benny out tis weekend for it's maiden voyage !
 
Got them from my dealer as they were the same price as what I found online. They were 16.95 each. Made by Marinco.
 
Well done!! Looks great! Not a bad afternoons work!! :)
 
Alright, been a while since i posted back here. Awesome responses so far!

I now have all the gear i need for the install.

My boat is 20ft long, so i purchased the following to cover the install. If all is well, this weekend i get the boat out and perform the work.

Here is my parts list.

3 16.4 ft 5050 waterproof led strips http://www.amazon.co...=tao led lights

1 Amplifier http://www.amazon.co...0?ie=UTF8&psc=1

1 50ft roll of cat 5e network cabling

various size zip ties

1 package of 150 stainless steel screws, small #6 1/2 inch long

40 ft worth of led rope light track (only one i could find, the led tape light i have fits in really tight, so it should work) http://www.menards.c...0339-c-6349.htm

about 50 little cable holders. these go around a cable and use one screw to fasten to deck

What i have done to prepare.

The cat 5 cable will be the cable i will run from the amp to the lights. This cable seemed sturdy enough, plus i happen to have the 50ft laying around. Only used 4 wires inside the cable, taped off the rest. The amp came with 2 spare connectors. I cut the 50ft cat5 in half and attached the led connector to the end of each cable. The other end i just stripped the cables and connected to amp. the amp has screws to run the wires to.

I know that many have said that you may not really need an amp. This is almost true. I was able to power all 3 strips end to end off of one controller. However, the color from one strand to the other did have a slight color change and was not as bright. The amp solved this issue and were much brighter.

My setup now is, 12v from boat to led controller (i actually opened up the controller and soldered wire to the back of the input plug then ran it out of the housing. This way i can just connect to the power source. You could have also cut the power supply cable and used that.

The controller goes directly to the amp. The amp also has 2 wires going to the power source. Then both light strips go directly to the amp in parallel. This setup gave me really bright output, so it will work.

Since my boat is 20ft, im not sure 16.4 will cover the rounded parts of the pontoons. What i have noticed on various pictures on the web is that the lights dont go the full length of the toons. Hence why i have the 3rd set of led lights that i plan to cut and extend each side if needed.

Here is what i have. After this weekend, i will have a lot more pictures!

3B668485-2B06-4580-B877-E6DD783A4A00-998-0000009C16CCA8A1_zps9a40a800.jpg


What i have left to do

Mount the plastic rope light channel to the bottom of the deck above the pontoons. I am not sure how this will work and not sure what it looks like under there. I saw someone put on an angle bracket, put I'm not quite ready for that. I hope i can just screw the channels to the decking with the stainless screws and pull the adhesive strip on the led light and shove it in the channel. If the adhesive is strong enough and i can mount directly to the underside, i will do that then use the screws with little plastic holders (kinda like the ones used for cable wire at home) to place every few feet or so to keep it from falling out.

then run the wires to the helm and figure out what to do with the IR sensor when i get there.

In theory this sounds like it will work, but we will find out. More to come and thanks for all the replies!

Here is my boat (pic taken last year), as you can see the logs taper off in the front, not sure if i should run the l.e.d.s all the way to the front.



Here you can see running 2 lights in series off of just the controller. Notice strip on the left (the second strip in series) is a slightly different color.



Here is just a random picture on how i connected wires to the controller



Alex...
 
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Installation complete! I ran into some technical difficulties, mainly my fault for getting some of the wires switched, but once that was sorted out, it worked out fine.

Initially i purchased a track that i was going to mount underneath then slip the lights into it. However, the lights really dont have to be that straight. On the driver side, i had a harness that was in the way, so i simply removed backing on the light strip stuck it to the harness then zip tied it ever 1.5ft. On the other side i just bought little cable clamps and simply used those along with the adhesive back to hold the lights up.

I ran the wires back to the helm and tapped in to the radio power, then ran the remote receiver just hanging out the side of the dash.

Here are some pics of the install and final.

as you can see, not really straight, its zip tied to harness

57B664AC-164C-4CE6-8980-A3C28E748172-4145-00000354549A81EA_zps0b7b07a6.jpg


Here's how it looked at sundown with blue light on

46FA0CC7-1A1D-4363-A4D2-43C376E422E8-4145-000003541EC587A4_zpsbdb21735.jpg


Here it is again when it was a bit darker

8C45E7D2-1D6D-4C5E-8DBD-552AB4200ABB-4145-000003542B8D7D0A_zps5f821fb2.jpg


And here is a video of the fade mode



All in all they look amazing!! They are too bright when turned all the way up and just perfect when turned down.

Let me know if you have any questions.

thanks,

Alex...
 
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Very nice indeed! Certainly proves the concept of pointing the LED strips downwards rather than inwards. I'm looking forward to getting my own project completed. Glad I chose to go the RGB route, just heard from a neighbor on the lake we're on that a local Sherriff started handing out tickets to pontoons running with blue perimeter lights as blue is reserved for law enforcement. We'll see how he reacts to the rest of the spectrum. :ph34r:
 
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Very cool !! Nice job.
 
Really cool !!
 
Looks good!
 
Hey Jim- I finally got my boat out with some good weather and snapped a pic of the underside. Take a look in my gallery, my perimeter trim is actually extruded "E" channel, so I can adhere the LED's to the middle E.
 
Would this perimter LED lighting work on an older boat like my 2005?

Also, any idea what the Bennignton dealership charges to install this? I wish I knew someone private I could hire to install this as I just do not have the time or the knowedlge to install this myself.
 
Well, I finally had some free time so I started pre-wiring all of my stuf so all I have to do is affix the strips and run the wire, plug an pray that is works!

Here is the controller box pre wired with (2) 12amp amplifiers into one single power input. I'm going to crimp on bullet connectors so I can disconnect it from the switched power supply under the helm.

image.jpg
 
PDX Hosedragger said:
Well, I finally had some free time so I started pre-wiring all of my stuf so all I have to do is affix the strips and run the wire, plug an pray that is works!

Here is the controller box pre wired with (2) 12amp amplifiers into one single power input. I'm going to crimp on bullet connectors so I can disconnect it from the switched power supply under the helm.

View attachment 606
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That looks correct. Good luck with the install! Don't forget to put a fuse on it and get spare fuses. I wired mine to the radio power and leveraged that fuse. Blew a couple in the process :-(

Can't wait to see your boat complete!

Alex...
 
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