Retrofitting a Nemo 8C Dive Light With a LED Spot
by chrlilje in Outside > Water
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Retrofitting a Nemo 8C Dive Light With a LED Spot
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![Nemo 8C Dive Light hacked with Aura Light 12 V LED spot (5.5W)](/proxy/?url=https://content.instructables.com/FJ6/WDBH/I53HYOJM/FJ6WDBHI53HYOJM.jpg&filename=Nemo 8C Dive Light hacked with Aura Light 12 V LED spot (5.5W))
A friend of mine have several old Nemo 8C dive lights. It is a sturdy lamp, favored by many divers around the world.
But as with anything having a classic halogen light bulb inside, the power use is high, and the light output is only great when you have absolutely fresh batteries.
As a test, we have retrofitted the Nemo dive light with a 12 V 7W LED spot.
As you see in the video, the light output is huge, and our tests so far show impressive battery life.
Find a 12 V LED Spot and Make Room for It
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Find a good quality 12 V LED spot.
I used a 7 W 12 V LED spot of the type to replace halogen light installations from Aura Light.
I would just go with whatever quality brand LED spot you have available locally.
7 W of LED light is roughly equivalent to 50 W of halogen light. That's a lot of light!
The ones with a GU 5.3 socket are great, because the GU 5.3 is basically two straight pins, that are easy to solder wire onto.
- Bend up the metal strip connectors for the old bulb
- Using a drill or a clipper, cut away the plastic of the old socket, and make room for the back of the LED
- Make sure to make the hole deep enough to have the spot fit under the glass of the lamp
- Take care to still leave the battery shoes intact, since we want to reuse all that.
- Cut the metal strips from the old bulb away
Solder Wires to the LED Spot and Mount It
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- Solder two pieces of wire to the LED spot.
- The GU5.3 has nice pins that is very easy to solder wires onto.
- Polarity is no problem - The LED spot will have rectifying diodes inside fixing that.
- Solder the other end of the wires to the metal strips.
- If you are having trouble getting the solder to stick, file a little bit on the strips to disturb the surface
- Mount the LED spot in the hole you made, and make sure it is embedded deep enough to fit behind the front glass.
- Once you are sure the assembly works, secure the LED spot with some hot glue.
Put It Together. Test It!
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Assemble the lamp as you always do.
Make sure the hot glue have not interfered with the batteries ability to touch the battery shoes.
TEST TEST TEST
Obviously a dive light is a safety item. You don't want it to burn out on you in the middle of the dark water.
I ran this lamp for 4 hours on the table, to make sure, that it would be stable.
A powerful LED spot like this 7W spot will produce quite a bit of heat. No where near as much as an equivalent halogen bulb would produce, but after the 4 hours the temperature inside where up in the 50-60 degrees Celcius area.
Using the light under water will provide much better cooling.
So, make sure your light works on the table before taking it out to sea. There is a lot of quality difference between LED spots, and if you have chosen a cheap crappy one, there is a good chance, that it will not survive the temperature inside the lamp house.
Battery time
The batteries I used for testing was not new, and had a combined output of 9.2 V when I started the test.
After 4.5 hours the voltage had dropped to 6.9
New batteries would have given out 12 V
Still, after the 4 hours and with only 6.9 V supply I had massive output of light.
Further studies
I have not yet tried out this hack in the water on a dive, but I am quite confident, that it would do the job at least as well as before. The light output will be similar or even more powerful - But the battery life will be much much longer.
I will post an update once this light have seen some sea trials.