Underwater lighting........

[Luxled]

Newb here.....I don't know much about lighting but I'm starting to get a grip on the basic principles by reading these forums...what a site! Do have a question for the vets out there...I want to install underwater lights on my boat for shrimping purposes. In the past I've used those cheapy Wal-Mart halogen lights rated at 100k candlepower. They did ok but never seemed to last long and it was hard to control the light direction to get the best illumination. Here's the specifics

Plan on using two S-600 by Abyss Technology mounted 8ft apart approximately 12"-18" below the water which is usually fairly clear.

Each light is a 6 LED 12 watt drawing 1 amp @ 12 volts....120 degree beam producing 350 lumens @ 7200 kelvin.

Lights to be powered by 12 volt marine battery with 200 cranking amps.

Will this setup illuminate the water at least 15ft in front of the boat?

How much brighter will this be as say....compared to 2D regular flashlight?

Should the battery power these lights continually for a 8hr period?


Thanks

 

[roverjohn]

I have no idea how well the light will perform underwater but you are using the wrong battery type. You would get better life out of a trolling battery instead of a starting battery. Your two lights draw 2A and you want eight hours of light. If you only discharge a deep cycle battery 20% it will last forever as there will be no sulfation at that level of discharge. So, 2x8x5=80Ahr is the size battery you need which is a relatively small trolling battery.
John.....

 

[Gunner12]

I just calculated the LED efficiency, 30 lumen per watt, very low, in Incandescent territory. The newer Seoul and Cree LEDs when driven at 3.7V and 1 amp will deliver 210 lumen. Efficiency varied between 100+ lumen/watt to about 50 lumen/watt depending on drive voltage. Just use good reflectors and you should be able to see clearly 50 feet away for the boat. Depending on the bin, the LEDs can be from 5000 Kelvin to 7000 Kelvin.

With 10 Seoul LEDs, there should be about 2100 lumen at the LED, the lens and reflector will absorb and reflect back some of the light so the amount of light out the front will be less.

With the output you are speaking off, it might be easier to get a HID dive light.

A normal 2D incandescent flashlight usually outputs between 10-20 lumen.

Welcome to CPF!

 

[65535]

IMHO you would be best off with dual 50 or even 75 watt hids. For the kind of light you need underwater you need 1000's or lumens. If it were me I would look into a water proof housing that would allow a small water circulation system to cool an interior mounted HID system. You could contact XeRay as he is very much into production HID.

 

[enLIGHTenment]

Each light is a 6 LED 12 watt drawing 1 amp @ 12 volts....120 degree beam producing 350 lumens @ 7200 kelvin.

700 lumens total? That's about equivalent to the output of a 50W incandescent bulb. I don't know anything about shrimping so I can't give any guidance on if that's bright enough.

Is there some reason you don't want to use an off-the-shelf fishing light, like this?

Should the battery power these lights continually for a 8hr period?

Can't answer that without knowing the amp hours (not CCA) of your battery pack.

Use a separate deep cycle battery to power your lights. DO NOT use your starting battery to power your lights. Starting batteries don't like sustained loads. Further, depleting your starter means someone else is going to have to come out and rescue you....

 

[bigtee]

Newb here.....I don't know much about lighting but I'm starting to get a grip on the basic principles by reading these forums...what a site! Do have a question for the vets out there...I want to install underwater lights on my boat for shrimping purposes. In the past I've used those cheapy Wal-Mart halogen lights rated at 100k candlepower. They did ok but never seemed to last long and it was hard to control the light direction to get the best illumination. Here's the specifics

Plan on using two S-600 by Abyss Technology mounted 8ft apart approximately 12"-18" below the water which is usually fairly clear.

Each light is a 6 LED 12 watt drawing 1 amp @ 12 volts....120 degree beam producing 350 lumens @ 7200 kelvin.

Lights to be powered by 12 volt marine battery with 200 cranking amps.

Will this setup illuminate the water at least 15ft in front of the boat?

How much brighter will this be as say....compared to 2D regular flashlight?

Should the battery power these lights continually for a 8hr period?


Thank

12 watt light for shrimping is not enough. 350 lumens will barely light up the water. This is an old post I came across but technology has come a long way since when this post was made. There are a lot of shrimping lights out there but I'd look more towards the flounder gigging space. The swamp eye submersibles by outrigger outdoors will run on 12v battery and will light up the world. Just one of them is nearly 20,000 lumens.

They have a lot of different type of submersibles but I'd do the solid 2000k if you're in muddy water or the solid 6000k if you're shrimping in clearer water. https://outriggeroutdoors.com/collections/flounder-gigging-lights

You can use lithiums now which work great, but honestly a good lead acid battery will work just as good. You can even get these 4D school bus batteries that have crazy amp hour capacities and really aren't that much more than a standard deep cycle. They're way cheaper than a lithium. That's the route I'd go if I was you.

Here we are 15 years later responding to this post but if I came across it I know other people will too. Hopefully it helps someone else out that gets caught in this situation. I'm looking for different mounting methods for my swamp eye lights for shrimping that's how I came across this so feel free to message me if anyone has ideas.