I have a plan, a little knowledge, but no experience.
I'm planning a lighting fit out for a new build, most of the fit out I plan to do using fibre optic since where some of these LED's will be will not be accessible should they fail without serious structural 'violation', I know it's unlikely but I've had LED's fail. That and I plan to try and replicate the effect from 50W halogen down lighters, the problem with fibre is diffusion once you get to the exit - may be able to round the ends with fine wet and dry.
I'm struggling to decide on a light source for the fibre optic and was thinking of something like a CREE high power LED - between 3 and 7 watts - for each fibre lighting circuit. I'm looking for suitable fibre optic but I think it will be all 3mm, I'm actually wondering whether a thicker fibre may not work for the lighting below the waterline too since I know that you can get 7mm dia.
I intend to drive all using a separate and dedicated 'lighting only' 3 or 4S Lipo via some sort of RC switch on all circuits. I have plenty of channels spare so each circuit can have its own switch, been looking at the 8 channel Arduino relay modules.
The thoughts are that using fibre optic means that I can tinker with the light source intensity / colour etc even when the model is built and failures are easily handled.
These are the planned circuits (I may add others)
- Nav Lights / Cockpit / Masthead : Circuit 1
- Rear upper deck (outside) lights : Circuit 2 (Fibre Optic)
- Rear lower deck (outside) lights : Circuit 3 (Fibre Optic)
- Under water lights (Jets) : Circuit 4 : (I do not plan to install LED directly through the hull - need some sort of diffuser)
- Under water lights (Perimeter) : Circuit 5 : (I do not plan to install LED directly in the hull - need some sort of diffuser)Under water light will be colour selectable RGB.
I'm short on experience of what is and isn't available so I need some hints regarding :-
- RC controlled switches / Relays
- Fibre Optic light sources and Fibre in general - light in versus light out, leakage - coated versus uncoated.
- Diffusers for mounting on the end of the fibre
- Diffusers for LED's
Whatever is 'designed' will be bench tested before it gets installed in the model.