LED Hallway nite-lights

I live in a off-grid home which was wired for possibly low voltage lights along a long hallway. These were never installed. I would like to install single white LEDs in each of these (4) locations.
The light locations are recessed wall pockets about 1' above the floor with a standard outlet box and blank cover. Inside is 2 wire stranded power cord (zip cord). There is a switch box in the middle of the 2 runs of zip cord where AC is also available. I expect the original idea was to wire a power converter there for the low voltage with a switch.
I'm looking for suggestions/instructions to create a similar solution using LED technology.

Try looking at theledlight.com for starts. That's one site with 12 & 24 volt led lamps and fixtures.

Fry's has some great ones, they're single led fixtures with an electric eye.

My friend got a pair of the LED nightlights at Target with the sensor... they are way too dim for much at night. I am eyeing the flourescent 1.6watt sensor nightlights on clearance at target.

Hi I have been playing with LED lighting in my home. I have a special interest in Solar PV systems and have a 1/2KW system on my home although I am conected to the grid. Recently I have been playing with a small stand alone LED lighting system in my verry small home actually a 2 bedroom condo. On ebay you can get some verry nice 3.2 Watt car battery maintainers which are made for VW and they ship all the new cars form the factory with one. They are made with poly crystalin cells not thin film and they have a charge controler inside the cigaret lighter conector. You can usually pick them up on ebay for $20-25 after shipping. I am using a 7AH 12V battery which I stole from my Thor spotlight, it is charged by this small panel. The panel actually can get up to 200MA of charge curent. I figure it gives me a little over 1 amp hour a day. I then have 3 luxeons, one in the kitchen/dining room, living room, and bathroom. They are wired in series and are conected to a controler that I made for them. It is a set of 2 switches wich can be used to set the output to hi, medium, low, and off depending on the switch combination. Hi = 500ma, medium = 150ma, low = 20ma. The low makes a great night light.
The part that may be especially usefull for your aplication is the newest set of LED's I have been playing with. I got my hands on some of the 1.5 watt white UFO Starfish LED's each one can be driven directly of 12V with a 10-15ohm resistor which will give you about 150Ma each. I put up 2 of these guyes in one bedroom and 1 in the second. The nice thing about them is they can each be independently conected to a 12V source like you described in your home and then at the junction box you can set up a switch fo them all and use some resistors to dimm them down inside of your controle box.
I have to say they are bright. Probably brighter then a luxeon but much more on the bulish side of the white spectrum. I also made a second switch setup for these starfish so that I can dim them down to a verry low curent and let them run all night long. I do not know how the Starfish LEDs will hold up over time but I am hoping they will do well.
I got my UFO Starfish LEDs form LED POWER for $5.75 each and $5.00 shipping. Not a bad price for a great led.

I now rarely use any of the interior lights in the house, and when I do it is only for a short specific task. The 6 LED lights and the One little 3.2 Watt solar panel meet nearly all of the lighting needs that I have in my home. with all the LED' on HI power they draw a little over 900Ma,
all of them on madium is about 300Ma which is still quite bright, and all on low draw about 40Ma.
I hope all this rambeling helped some. I would like to do a full right up on my system with pictures and all but I need to find some way to host my pictures on line?

How about a current regulating power supply tucked in with the switch and a Luxeon I inside each box? Wire them all in parallel. You'd have a Luxeon and its heat sink in each box and have the cover mounted slightly off the box so air could circulate and cool the heat sink.

Get metal cover plates, (for the mechanical strength) paint them to match your house, drill a small hole in the middle of the plate for the LED to shine out. Stick a nut over each of the plate mounting screws between the wall and the plate so it will be a little out from the wall. A little plastic diffuser over each led so it doesn't blind anyone and you should be good for the next ten years or so.

Want brighter? Use Luxeon III's. Want dimmer? Use 10 MM LEDs. Or use III's with a dimmer switch.

I have had that idea too. I have seen some cheap white led lights for use in your car sockets and considered just mounting them in places that are dark and using it on 12 volts. I think somewhere or homepower I saw where someone ran pvc pipe along the edge of a room and used single 5mm leds along the way to make light and used a deep cycle battery and solar setup to power it. I think he left them on 24/7

A few years ago befor I got merried and I was living with my fokes. I wanted to run my room off of solar. I purchased 1 75 Watt panel, a charge controler, and a 100 Amp hour deepcycle battery. For my lighting I bought a bunch of white LEDs from one of those Chines Ebay sellers. I had 105 of them setup all around the room. The 105 lights consisted of 35 sets of 3 LEDs in series with a 100 ohm resistor. The curent would verry slightly depending on the charge voltage of the battery but around the highest voltage had each string of LEDs being driven at about 25ma. I would keep them on 24/7 and after a little over a year all the LED's had become quite dim and blue. I don't know if this was form being slightly over driven or of questionable quality but I was expecting a little more life ought of them. It probably would have worked ought beter if I had used Nichia LEDs.
I knew someone who bought a Chines Knock off of a Petzl Zipka and the LEDs in it burnt out after a week. I don't think they used any limiting resistors in it.

overdriving does reduce the life and if you consider how many hours in a year over 8500 hours it isn't suprising they dimmed. If you underdrive them and put them on a timer to limit use to perhaps 8-10 hours you could probably make them last 5 years or more. The savings on electricity probably would pay for them anyway.

My 1.6watt flourescent nightlights are fairly bright. I picked up a third one, I am only using one of them but at $1.48 each (clearance) they are a bargain and brighter I think than a 7 watt incan with no yucky yellow color.

I am trying to do something similar.

Here is my thinking so please everyone help me out here?

Price and parts is a consideration as well is amount of work put into this.

6x 3.6V 50mah solar panels runing about 5 hours a day give 1500 mah a day. 6x $2.65 per panel.

2x cells nmih cells 1800mah cells or larger. 2x $1.50 each.

Off the shelf solar garden light on sale, 1x $9.50 and you get 2.

2x Luxeon star. 2x $5.50 each

2x Dorcy 1xAAA lights hacked to get driver circuit. 2x $6

The above configuration should provide 125mah for 12 hours from battery.

The solar cells charge the batteries durring the day. The solar garden light provides the control circuitry to turn off the light durring the day and turn on the light at dark. This is really the only reason I would need the garden light for the control circuit and maybe to hold the batteries.

This should give enough power to run the lights all night long. I may be under driving the 2 luxeon Stars (75mah each).

What do you all think? Is this an efficient way to provide a hallway light or night or front door light with minimal input and maintenance for cheap?

We are talking about $44. And this should provide light for 5 years or more, depending on the solar cell longevity and you should end up with light all night long, plus a little more for those days of less sun, you can probably run 2 days. Would the stars be bright enough at 75mah? Would it be better to only run 1 to get a reasonable enough amount of light?

I think I found a circuit that may help reduce the need for a solar outdoor light. I can use circuit called a Nocternal SED1 solar engine. It allows you to charge a set of batteries or CAP durring the day and run the LOAD after dark.