LEDs in the Camper

So I'm replacing the incandescent lamps in my Airstream with an LED based lighting system. The main illumination in the cabin is supplied by clusters of four 1156 bulbs per fixture in 7 fixtures. Measured current draw on several bulbs was ~1.4A@12VDC, for ~17 watts, even though GE says the 1156 is a 27 watt bulb, for 2A+ draw. No matter. GE says at 2A, the 1156 should produce 400 lumens; I know it's not linear, but linear calculations should be sufficient for this kind of back-of-the-napkin engineering; I'm saying that if an 1156 produces 400 lumens at 27 watts, it probably produces around 250 lumens at 20W (400/27=15lumens/watt*17W=255lumens). This makes for ~1000 lumens per fixture, at 6A. ( Yes, I know luminous output is determined by filament temperature; I'm not building the space shuttle )

I ordered several kinds of LEDs for experimentation, but one of the more promising is the Luxeon 1W LED, that produces ~100 lumens for 300ma@3-4VDC. So 3 of them in series should draw ~300ma@12VDC for 300 lumens; if I replace each 1156 with three of these 1W Luxeons, I get ~1200 lumens for ~1.2A@12VDC! For roughly the juice used by ONE fixture, I can run all seven!

This assumes I use the standard fixtures. I'm thinking of some other solutions - for instance, I've found some 5 lumen 5mm LEDs with the same 3-4v voltage, 20ma draw. I'm thinking about taking a piece of flat white plexiglass and gluing, say, 100 of those (well, 99, as I need 'em in 3-deep series/parallel for 12V w/o limiting resistors) to it, then replacing the fixture with this new, 1/2" thick low profile light panel @ ~500 lumens. Less light, true, but I'm thinking about supplementing with some indirect light from white CCFTs around the edge of the cabin. This would make for a soft, easy-on-the-eyes light, while cutting the power consumption to extremely low levels. The CCFTs just aren't bright enough to replace the current lamps by themselves, though.

Anyway, I'll post back here with further developments as I experiment. :D