Light in Canopy - LED Strip

For light inside my canopy I used a normal LED strip with 3mm LED's, called 3528 SMD LEDs.

These strips are for sale at http://www.4x4direct.co.za/shop/

The LED strip is suitable for DC 12V which makes it ideal for us in a vehicle and it has 3M double sided tape on the back so that you can easily just stick it to most surfaces.

I used a normal bed lamp switch as switch. Some LED strips are sold with a little micro switch on it. I stayed away from those as I heard too many people complain that they do not last very long in the dust, vibration and heat of a 4x4.

Another advantage of using the bed lamp switch is that you can run more than one strip from one switch. I added two 150mm strips above the kitchen, against the roof and I added two 300mm LED strips and one 50mm strip in the open area of the canopy.

The kitchen lights work on one switch and the other three work on the other switch. Thus I can switch on all three the LED strips in the open area with one strip, if each of those had its own switch it would have been a big nuisance.

Two 300mm strips with 3mm LEDs are more than sufficient for a normal double cab canopy.

The LED Strips I used:

The LED strips above the kitchen:

One of the LED Strips in the open area of the canopy:

The normal bed lamp switch I used and which i attached by means of double sided tape: