4 minute read
LED Lighting Control
LED Lighting Control
Controlling your boat’s LED lights is easier than ever.
By Glenn Hayes
Lighting onboard is an often-overlooked feature and a rapidly advancing technology. LED lights are replacing tungsten on many new boats, builds and retrofits, and all for a good reason. They are bright, consume little energy, last a long time and are usually available in limitless colors. Control of LED lights has also advanced rapidly — gone are the days of needing large banks of toggle switches to control them all.
Impressive control
Most quality marine LED lights produced today are sophisticated electronic components with circuitry that can enable control over brightness, color, hue and the ability to ramp up slowly to full brightness when turned on. As these features became available, the wiring and switching necessary to enable these features became complicated, with many circuits and switches required. That is no longer the case with products from companies such as Lumitec, Shadow-Caster, and other quality LED lighting manufacturers.
Many lights made today can be controlled with a simple on-off switch to cycle between colors and intensity. Some switches even remember the last setting and automatically turn to that setting when powered up again. However, attractive options are available if you have a more complex system of lights onboard and want to control them individually or by groupings. With the growing capabilities and more open software architecture of multifunction displays and their expanding compatibility with electronic switching, there are now accessible and intuitive lighting controls available right on the screens you have onboard already. With products such as the ShadowCaster Light Commander and Lumitec’s Power Line Instruction (PLI — a proprietary lighting protocol) technology, the amount of control a boater has with their onboard LED lighting is impressive.
Lumitec options
Operating in conjunction with onboard digital switching, such as Navico’s CZone, all of Lumitec’s PLI-equipped light features are controlled digitally through one set of wires. This drastically simplifies a builder’s need for complex vessel circuitry. These lights have sophisticated software that drives internal circuitry, allowing for digitized controls over existing wires. With digital signals sent down the wires, these digitized systems can monitor voltage, temperatures, current, line noise and user input, such as color selection, brightness, strobing effect, lighting patterns, dimming and more. By simply programming switches on the multifunction display, a boater can control any function on individual and banks of lights.
Lumitec also offers a digital controller that works in conjunction with its PLI-enabled lights. Called the POCO, it’s a powered four-bank controller that makes installing or retrofitting Lumitec lights with simple wiring easier than ever. Taking the place of four traditional switches, the POCO allows for the control of multiple features through a compatible multifunction display. Connecting to the display through an Ethernet cable, this well-designed little controller also allows for Bluetooth connection and control through a smart device.
Shadow-Caster Light Commander
Taking a slightly different approach, Shadow-Caster developed the first LED lighting controller that utilizes NMEA 2000. Combined with a compatible multifunction display and connecting through NMEA 2000, the Light Commander (SCM-LC) module automatically populates the lighting control software in the MFD that already has the new NMEA lighting protocol within it. The SCM-LC can control up to six zones of lighting and is expandable, and there is an option available for wireless connectivity to a smart device such as a phone or tablet. Each programmable switch on the MFD screen can be customized and can control on/off power, brightness and color. You can also set effects such as strobe, fade or four types of music sync. This plug-and-play controller is compatible with specific Garmin, Simrad, Lowrance, Raymarine and Furuno model displays. It is also expandable to 12 or 18 zones with added modules. The controller has the capability of six instant-on switches that allow lights to power up without the need for the display to be turned on.
As marine LED lights get more robust and complex in their capabilities, the means to control them are becoming easier and more intuitive. While toggling a switch to run through a light’s functions may be straightforward, it’s not as simple or satisfying as having a display with all functions preprogrammed and ready to operate. With a little effort, a boater can light up the night easily and effectively, and even put on quite a show. ★
