Raymarine E120 & E80 backlight failure

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Just the other day the backlight for our classic Raymarine E 120, Navigator(MFD), stopped working.

It's from 2006 so I'm not surprised that things happen. You may wonder why we keep it instead of buying a new one but the thing is that we have 2 installed together with a well functioning radar so buying new stuff will be a hefty price tag.

After some Googling I found out that the backlight is produced by a CCFL, a type of neon light, and can give up after some years.

The Googling also gave some tips how to change to a LED backlight. The picture above is showing a test with a short LED light strip to verify the solution, with dimming working, and checking the health of the MFD.

Sources
Blogpost on how to
3 YouTube videos showing the method
Google search 

Hardware info
LED strip
  • Link to Amazon
  • Use cold LED light for better contrast
  • 3M adhesive !!
  • With the mentioned led strip I used 2 meter so 2000 lm and 20 W 
MOS-fet, N-channel
  • IRF 630 which I had "in stock"
  • Any other N-channel FET could be used handling 2 Amps(My use case)
Additional info
The left leg on the big capacitor, in the upper part of the picture, is + 12 VDC and the right one is ground.

A NPN darlington could also be used but a FET will lower the power dissipation.

The FET is super glued to the board

Missed the schematics so did a quick one.

If the MFD is sourced by 24 VDC please use a 24 VDC LED strip


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