he first night I camped in it . While it was comfortable, it was very cold. The metal of the bed conducted all of
my body heat away and I was miserable. So I built a wooden platform to get my bed off the cold metal. This also gave me plenty of storage space underneath the platform for all the camping gear. While this was quite a bit warmer, two separate air mattresses went flat in the middle of the night, leaving Jean and I to wake up stiff and sore on the hard wood deck. The next step was a foam mattress that solved that problem. Jean got the foam at  The Foam Source  in Boulder. They  cut the foam to size  and Jean sewed covers for them. We had to wait a couple of weeks for the foam to be delivered to their shop but it was worth it to get the right size.



Now we had a nice place to sleep but it was a bit dark at night. I needed to install some lights The truck had a trailer plug in the bed for a gooseneck trailer so power wasn't a problem. However, I didn't want to run a big load off the plug since it was fed from the start batteries. It has  two start batteries and would be pretty hard to jump it if we ran them dead. Since I like to get off the beaten path, I didn't want to risk running the start batteries down in the middle of nowhere just to light the topper.

I do  lighting design at work so I had a pretty good idea of what kind of light I wanted. Incandescent lights convert 90% of the current they draw into heat with only 10% of the current producing light. Good fluorescent light are about 25% efficient but 12v fluorescent lights have terrible color rendition. They produce light that is mostly blue and even though there might be a lot of light, it is still difficult for the eye to see detail with poor color rendition. There have been some advances in white LED lights in the last couple of years so I started to look for an RV LED light.The latest, high tech LEDs have an efficiency approaching 85% with a good color spectrum so that people don't look like zombies. And finally, a good incandescant lamp is good for about 2000 hours, a fluorescent about 20,000 and an LED is good for 100,000 hours. I sure like the idea of a lamp that lasts longer than I'll own the truck. I made some sacrifices in lamp life for output, but I'll describe that later.

This is my truck at night with all the LED lights on. Reading lights, bed lighting and tailgate lighting.

 
This is what it looks like inside the topper. There's plenty of light inside. The light in front has two sides. I can turn on the light on my side to read and Jean can turn the light on her side as well. The light is directed well enough that the person on the opposite side of the light can sleep while it's on.

 With incadenscent and fluorescent lights, you need some kind of fixture with reflective surfaces to direct the light where its needed. LEDs are manufactered with with set angles of dispersion. This means that you can stick an LED over an area  and aim the light where you want.
 

The six  horizontal LEDs are a mixture of 20 degree and 120 degree beam widths. The 20 degree LEDs are pointed towards the front of the truck and the 120 degree LEDs are pointing  towards the back of the truck. This lights the whole bed more evenly then using all 20 degree lights as I had originally  designed it. The six vertical LEDs are for the tailgate. Since the light is fairly high off the tailgate, the 20 degree LEDs have enough distance to spread out for even light.   

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