John Szarek, C387 #129, Magical Dreamer, AnnapolisMD

Mainsheet, May 2010

I have always been amazed by LED’s, ever since that star wars LED watch I had as a kid so I thought it would be interesting to experiment with upgrading my lights to LED.  Before I get to the fun part of replacing the bulbs, I want to explain a few semi-technical things about LED’s.   I will be extremely general so all the EE’s out there please forgive over simplification of some parts.  So the first problem I ran into was looking at my 10 watt halogen bulbs and trying to figure out how to match them to LED’s since LED’s are rated in lumens.  One does not relate to the other directly as a watt is a measure of power and lumens are a measure of perceived light.  On average most incandescent bulbs (DC) produce about 10 lumens per