LED Lights under Awning Shorted out

[tbray]

We have a very early 2020 Eagle HT (purchased in the spring of 2019).

Last year the LED strip under the awning shorted out. Water got in at the wiring connection and made a mess. It sort of melted the plastic round the lamps.

I never liked the blue lights in the first place so I found a strip of amber LEDs to replace it. I used the 3M tape that came with it to mount them below the channel where the original lights went.

The camper has a wireless remote that controls the awning light, the slide outs and maybe something else. When I turn on the lights using the switch or the remote, they initially come on at full brightness. After a minute or so they step down to about half brightness, and this continues getting dimmer over the next 10 minutes or so before LEDs go out or remain at a very dim level.

I assume that either the new lights draw more power than the controller is set to deliver or when the old lights failed it damaged the controller.

I don't really want to buy a new controller and have it installed so I am considering alternatives.

First I almost never used the remote control to operate the lights. The remote over rides the control panel switch and there is no indication that it has done that. So I was considering bypassing the remote and have the switch just power the lights directly (with a fuse in series).

My other though, is to have the remote output drive a small relay that would then power the LED strip. It would still need a fuse to protect the wiring.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

[ARoamer]

Put a voltmeter on your led power input to verify your power source is good before going deeper. A lot of the led strips I have experience with aren't of good quality. Segments fail, and I think even the "3M" tape isn't even legit as even with proper surface prep they still fall off.

[tbray]

The voltage starts at around 13V, drops to 6V, then down to about 5V, at that point I stopped measuring. When powered at 13V all the LEDs are lit.

The strip is one of those ones that they sell in the RV stores rated for automotive and camper use. They normally have a high price tag. I guess no one wanted an amber light set so it was marked down 50 percent.

[tbray]

I opened up the cover behind the control panel and found the controllers for the camper. I have schematics but none of them actually match what is in the camper. I found one that seemed to have the switches wired the same as what was installed and used that.

The schematic shows that there is a 3A fuse in series with the LED light strip. There were no notes on where it was located and it wasn't next to the controllers.

I found a 3/4" hole where the wires came out for the LED strip and the awing motor and decided to try digging that out. That was a lot of work. The caulk used is very rubbery and sticks amazingly well to the wall material. I finally got it open enough to fish the awing motor wires and there crimp connection to the wires going back to the controller.

I didn't have quite as much luck with the LED wires. While attempting to align the crimp connections in the hole, the red wire separated at the crimp. So I had the black wire still intact and a red wire with a tiny solid state fuse attached to it, the plus wire and its crimp weren't visible.

After a trip to Harbor Freight to get a set of hemostats and grabbed my inspection camera. I managed to get the black wire and its crimp aligned in the hole and fished out. I then got the other wire to a point where I could grab it and was able to get everything through the hole.

I checked on the wires back by the controller and found that they were very taught. So my plan is to pull new wires for the LED lights, along with a second pair for a planned for porch light.

Fuses will now be located next to the controller. If something happens to the LED strip again I can splice the wires after they come out of the side of the camper.

I would have expected that the fuse should have just blown, but apparently it was only damaged making it behave the way it did. It may have been one that was designed to automatically reset but the failure of the original LED strip may have been too much for it.

[us71na]

If the wire pulled out of the connector that is probably the cause of your dimming LEDs. If the inline fuse had failed you would have had no lights at all.