So I have my shack in the garage and that is lit by 12 or so LED shop lights. Each light unit is made up of 100 or so surface mount LED and the lighting is great BUT these things put out so much RFI across every band that I have to run shack operations in the dark with only an incandescent bulb. I want & need the nice bright shop lights and would rather run LEDs, Does anyone know of some LED shop lights that are RF quiet?
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LEDs themselves are quiet but some SMPSs generate RFI. You can find SMPS that is RF quiet, or since LED strips take so little power, you can make a tiny linear power supply for them, linear power supplies don’t have RF problems
Sounds like the drivers for the LED’s are to blame. You could try buying strands of LED lights, the ones that have a bunch of 5050 size LED’s on a strip and are often embedded in plastic for protection, and keep the driving circuitry somewhere outside the shed or in a shielded location.
Avoid led strands that have any control circuitry built it. Also stay away from individually addressable RGB type as they often have some microchips built into each LED plus operating them in any type of blinking/strobing pattern (unlikely given what you’re looking to do with them) would potentially create minor RF.
They make bright white and yellow white LED strands that put out a good amount of light. You’d need several strands to replace spotlights but it could be done. The important thing is running the extra wire to keep the drivers outside of your workspace and/or isolating the driver in some kind of Faraday cage.
Those LED strips don’t need any drivers since they have current limiting resistors built in. They just need a DC power supply. If you use a clean power supply, there won’t be any noise.