Friday 14th February 2025

In my van build I have 8 LED puck lights in the ceiling which run off a Bluetti AC200 battery, and are run through a remote dimmer (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D228GS4K). When I purchased the van everything was already set up, but the previous owner was having a flickering issue with the LEDs, especially when dimming, so his solution was to run them off the AC power from the Bluetti, using a AC converter back to DC. Seemed weird to me since all it did was convert back to 12V but this did indeed mitigate the problem. After a while though I decided I wanted to move the lights off the AC power since we had a few road trips where having the AC conversion turned on was too much of a drain on our Bluetti battery.

So I rewired them back to DC, still through the dimmer, and of course the flicker was terrible. So I bought a new dimmer and that didn’t really make a difference either, so then I broke out the multimeter. The one thing I noticed was that the DC from the AC converter was pretty consistent at about 12.66 volts, but the DC out directly from the battery was anywhere between 12.5 and 14.4 volts. This should have given me an answer, but I’m just a guy with a van, not an electrical expert. I had read a bunch of articles saying that some flicker is standard with DC power and LEDs, but the flicker I had was pretty bad.

What ultimately solved the problem was adding a voltage regulator. It takes anything from 8 to 40 volts and outputs a steady 12V. (So in my case the fluctuating 12-14 volt output from the Bluetti now goes as a consistent 12V into the dimmer.) I also read that this is pretty standard with the Bluetti batteries where the 12V output is not always exactly 12V, so everything now makes perfect sense. If your LED lights in your van flicker, make sure the voltage going to them is consistent and is not jumping up or down. And of course make sure your wiring is correct and also that there isn’t too much voltage drop, otherwise you’ll run into other problems.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back To Top