Travel trailer led replacement fixture build.

Well my trailer has the run of the mill halogen puck lights in it. I am tired of them, and they need to be replaced. Well I can not find lights I like that are a reasonable price so here goes the build!!

I am thinking about the CREE XP-E2 Warm white CRI 80 (If I can find them on stars) I was thinking one die per fixture, I have 8 in one string, and 6 on another. I am really wanting dimming also.

I am looking into the TI TPS 54227 or a LM3414 driver chip. I still need to look into optics, mounting, and heat sinks more. I have to pull one of my fixtures out to see how much room I have for the fixture.

My driver chips, and other electronic parts will be here next week. I still need to hunt down leds on stars or figure out how I can mount the LED's directly to the fixture once its built.

Any tips? Places to look? Lessons learned from other builds?

Thanks guys!

Well in the other thread guys were talking about the cxa LED so I am going to try those. I got 10 of the cxa1304 so I may need to change my driver set up. Now to set out for some reflectors. Mounting height is 7'6" so I am thinking a fairly wide reflector. Either that or a lens to widen and even the light out.

May be a bit late now depending on your drivers, but this would be the perfect application for the Cree CXA COB LEDs. If the lighting is all 12v, you can use the CXA1304 LED (9 volt version) and a 10 ohm resistor or a driver. These will make over 400 lumens without breaking a sweat. Just epoxy the LED board to an aluminum plate and fit inside the fixture.

Edit: your second post appeared after I posted this one. Smart choice using the CXA LEDs. The 9v ones scream, "Use me in 12v applications!"

The cxa1304 should be on the way! I saw a ad for reflectors on here but can not find it now.

I think I'm going to try to setup drivers for it for the dimming capability, I wonder how low I can run them?? Worst case I will break the stream up in half. Hopefully parts will show up next week so I can figure out fixtures, heat sinks, and reflectors.

Oh next question are you running strings in parallel or series.

You should be able to dim them from full to dark depending on the driver. I'm using the LEDs individually.

I have the parts for a Texas instruments lm3434 driver chip and circuitry components to support it. We will see how things start rolling when it gets here.

Well I ended up changing my mind yet again.... I have some CREE MX6 leds on stars heading this way. I could not for the life of me find the stars for the XP-E2, I wanted to try to have all 7-8 lights powered off one driver for dimming simplicity. So it looks like with the MX6 I can accomplish this and have them already mounted. I am still going to explore the CXA's with the huge forward voltage I was going to have to go individual drivers or go well beyond low voltage lighting (which I don't want to do on this project) I think I am going to go that route in the house.

Where are yall getting your stars and LED's from?? Digikey had just about every variation of the LED I wanted in stock, I just could not find the PCB boards to go with them. I ended up finding my stars from ledrise, the only other places that I could find the PCB's I had to get 500 minimum.

Thanks!

I have finally made some headway on this! I ended up with XPE2 in 3k, my boards to use the TI LM3414HV drivers got here last week. I have the main parts of the fixtures fabricated, now just for some finish work on them and tap a chit load of holes. Then assemble and install!. On the ones I'm going to dim, I'm setting up a MSP430 to have PWM dimming. I might eventually make an app to Bluetooth to the MSP for remote control. I'll get some pictures up soon.

Two operational fixtures installed in the trailer!

18 more to go!