LEDs Etc

News on Selling the Business

I completed a deal for Nancy to take over the Plug-n-Play LED business at her BriteLEDIdeas LLC website. I was acting as a dealer for her, but now that her website is up and running, she asked that I stop taking orders for her products.

If you go to www.prudentrver.com you will find links into her website.

In the meantime, Nancy does not want to sell the fLEDescent products and linear lighting. So I am still offering those products on my website. Since she is moving toward ending her relationship with Neutek, I will be checking into some of the newer products from Neutek to offer at prudentrver.com.

Stay tuned for more news.

sam

Selling the LED Business

For the last five and a half years I have sold retail LEDs to the RV market. It started when I met Kelly Walterscheid at Quartzsite and became a dealer, then a distributor for him in the 12v RV LED bulb business.

One of my dealers, Nancy Lesser-Adamo, became my business associate and ran a booth in Yuma during the last two winters at the Arizona Market Place. I have now sold my share of the business to her and she will be carrying the banner forward from here. She is Nancy, the LED Lady, and has an Internet domain called BriteLEDIdeas.com. She is working on getting that website into an Internet store.

In the meantime, I will continue to sell her LED product line at prudentrver.com until she is up and running. I am acting as a dealer for her, and she will be doing the shipping while I get a small commission. She will also take responsibility for all the dealers and for working with Neutek in Mesa, AZ, on the procurement of product to sell.

It has been a good time in the LED business, and I think I have made some contributions on the direction of that market. But now it is time that I try once again to do the retirement thing. I will try to not flunk out again.

sam

Sorry, No Prudent RVer at Gypsy Rally

Some of my health issues have gotten in the way of my being at the Gypsy Rally in Yuma the week of March 5. We will not have a booth in the market, but our booth at the Arizona Market Place in Row B up the street at 4th Ave and 32nd Street is still going strong. Nancy, the LED Lady, is running that show.

I will miss seeing all my friends at the Gypsy Rally, but that is the way of life sometimes. Take care.

Sam Penny, the Prudent RVer

Prudent RVer at the Gypsy Rally in Yuma

The week of March 5 is time for the Gypsy Rally at the Fairgrounds in Yuma, AZ. Alice and I will be manning a booth in the market, and I will be giving a seminar on LEDs in RVs. This has always been a fun rally to attend, and I expect to be fun again.

In the meantime, Nancy the LED Lady will be running the booth at the Arizona Market Place at 4th Ave and 32nd Street. If you are in the area, stop by for a visit and see out latest products.

Sam Penny, the Prudent RVer

PS, I will be autographing and selling my new book, Was a Time When, at the rally. You can read about it at www.WasATimeWhen.com and purchase it on Amazon as a printed book or Kindle book.

LEDs and RF Interference

I notice there has been a lot of traffic on this blog about the RF problem with some LED products, where a hearing-aide or a TV or a radio has problems when the LEDs are turned on.

First, LEDs do not produce the radio frequency interference. An LED is simply a diode that emits light when a DC current is run through it. There is no complex circuitry within an LED to create the radio waves.

Second, the power source generating the voltage to run into the diode is what can produce the radio frequency interference. It all depends upon the design of the circuit around the LED chip. Some inexperienced design engineers are taking a simple, cheap approach to providing power to the LED, and their products create the RF interference.

So if someone says to you, "All LEDs generate RF, tell that person he/she does not know what they are talking about. Only LED devices with poorly designed power circuitry have that problem."

Sam Penny, the Prudent RVer at www.prudentrver.com
and the author at www.WasATimeWhen.com

Prudent RVer in Yuma

I wish everyone a great holiday season, and if you are looking for a unique present, LEDs make a lot of sense. We are operating our booth at the Arizona Market Place at 4th and 32nd in Yuma again this year. Come by and see us.

Sam Penny

the Prudent RVer

Combos, the Latest in Configurable LED Lights for RVs

PrudentRVer.com has combined the flexibility of the zipLED with the ZDisk of the W9.RV3N products into an even newer more flexible product. We call them "Combos."

PrudentRVer.com began selling zipLED products three years ago. These allow the customer to use different light bases to fit the variety of lightbulb sockets in an RV and connect various lightsticks to those bases to solve lighting problems.

Last year we introduced the least expensive solution on the Internet for replacement of the 921 bulb in RVs. This product incorporated the 6 and 10 LED chip designs of the RV2N and RV3N ZDisks.

This summer, at the Escapade in Gillette, WY, Nancy Lessor-Adamo, the LED Lady, began to experiement with how to attach the ZDisk to a zipLED base and created two new products, the B15.ZD6 and the B15.ZD10. She called these products the "Combos." You can see them at www.PrudentRVer.com.

This combination of technologies allows us to provide 200 lumens of light in a flexible solution to fill B15s and B15d sockets in 12volt systems. The voltage regulation features of the ZDisks provide an even better LED product for your RV or boat. Give it a try.

sam

Whither RV LEDs

LED lighting for RVs is a very small niche market. There are not many RVs (compared to homes and businesses) and the primary selling point is to replace existing light bulbs with something better.

The prudentrver.com has worked with Neutek over the past five years to find the best implementation for RV bulb replacements and to find the best kind of light for RVers. We believe we have done a very credible job and have a product line that many are happy with.

Unfortunately, we are a flea on the end of a dog's tail and are being tossed around like a piece of flotsam in the ocean. There are many who have looked at our product and "knocked" it off, making replications at a cheaper price. Unfortunately, they most often did not understand the fine points of the technology and so miss the mark on product quality, and they do not understand the fine points of the kind of light people in RVs want and need. It is not the blue-white lite that is so easy to make with LEDs, it is a high-CR natural warm white that works in that environment.

At this time we are making re-orders for product we have qualified and purchased in the past, but our suppliers in China (the only source) have upped the minimum order quantity by a factor of 10. Our business is growing, but not that fast. So we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I am not sure how it will all work out. We are in negotiations and hope to find some way of surviving and still providing what we believe is the best LED lighting out there, but there is the danger that we may not survive. For those who care, just wanted to let you know we are doing our best.

sam, the Prudent RVer

Powering LEDs With AC

I am working on a couple of articles on installing LEDs in an AC (Alternating Current) environment, you know, the 120VAC we find in most domestic homes. The biggest push in the industry is to design LED lamps that work well in that market. The 12VDC market of the RVs is really small potatoes.

LEDs are intrinsically DC devices. They are diodes that want the current to flow in only one direction. To use them efficiently in an AC environment requires specialized circuits.

The problem all started with Thomas Edison. He wanted the electrical grid of the USA to be an AC grid and make use of the generators and such he had invented. Tesla wanted a DC grid, but he lost out. Now we have all our home filled with AC power, and the fixtures are designed to work in that environment.

The simple incandescent light bulb (a 60W for example) has an "Edison" base. This is a screw-in and the usual size is 27mm in diameter. The ground line is connected to the socket surrounding the base, and the power is applied to the contact at the bottom of the base. That electrical power supplies the full 120VAC current to the filament inside the bulb. The flow of current causes the filament to heat up to white hot and emit light.

The 60W incandescent bulb emits about 840 lumens of white light. This much light is required because all the light is coming from a single source, and it must be strong enough to fill a large room space.

In an RV the lights run on 12VDC. There are multiple light bulbs, each of which emits in the range of 150 to 250 lumens. Since these are placed throughout the ceiling and walls of the RV, there is no single source of light. Rather, the light is spread out and each source does not have to be so bright as with a 60W bulb.

We have had very good results if we use linear LED lighting in an RV. This spreads the source of the light even more, and makes for good indirect lighting.

So my forthcoming articles will discuss the pros and cons of using AC power for LED lamps. It can be done, but it tends to be more expensive. But it is very hard to convince people to look for a lighting method that does not use the old-style Edison-base bulbs they always have had.

Sam Penny, the Prudent RVer

Advertising on My Website - PrudentRVer.com

I recently began to run a couple of google ads on my website www.prudentrver.com. The purpose is to add some interest to the website, and maybe create some income for our efforts.

What is interesting is that some of the ads that google is selecting to display (I provide the space, they provide the ads) are for LED products. Now some would freak out over this because the competition is moving in on us, but I think it is a great idea. Show people who the competition is, then let them go there, then they will realize how much better our product set is. That is my philosophy.

So, if you visit our website and see an ad for someone else's LED, be our guest and go look. If we are not good enough for you to come back, we don't deserve your business.

Sam Penny, the Prudent RVer