Last Updated: 18/02/2024

What an interesting week has been, dealing with Narva and some other company that do sell their products.

I wanted to purchase an LED lights that also has a PIR built in for the front door. After a bit of search I came across the NARVA 87788 (pictured above) feature at Caravanplus.

After examining the few picture I realised that in the back of the lights it clearly state that it is a 12Volts only LED, and yet in the description under voltage it state 9-33Volts. Because I’m running 24 Volts, I was interested in this lights only if it really was 9-33Volts. So I left an email for Mike asking what the true voltage really was as it also did seem a very expensive LED lights. I mean you can buy a separate PIR (12 or 24 Volts) for about $5 dollars and then you have 10 LED’s. While waiting for Mike’s reply, I did contemplate the idea of using instead the Narva 87780 that it is a 9-33 Volts lights, and to purchase the PIR separately…

I also did check the NARVA website and even there I could see the 12Volts sticker and a 9-33Volts in the description. So I decided to ask NARVA the same question I previously asked in the Caravanplus site.

Mike from Caravanplus did reply and confirmed that those 87788 LED are 9-33 Volts.

Unfortunately, Berry from NARVA did confirmed the day after, my suspicion that those lights are actually only 12 Volts as per sticker on the back, and that the description for the 9-33Volts was just being copy and pasted from the 87780 lights.

Barry did changed the description on NARVA website to reflect the true voltage of those lights and removed the 9-33Volts description. I then contacted Mike again and just forwarded to him Barry’s email, so that he could changed the description as well. He did but he still has the 9-33Volts advertised in the actual picture of the lights. I can’t be bother to contact him again, but remember the Narva 87788 is not 9-33Volts, only 12!

I don’t blame Caravanplus or the other NARVA suppliers that still advertise those lights as multivoltage. After all even NARVA had the same misleading technical data on their website, so it probably just got copied and paste form the distributors.

I did however manage to get my hand on one of those lights (on special for $60) to see myself what it could be done to converted to 24 volts. While looking at the Narva wiring instruction, I did manage to find other discrepancies..

By looking at the picture to the right you can clearly see the wiring colours as:

  • Red = Positive (+)
  • Black = Negative (-)
  • White = Negative (-)

But you can also see that in the schematic after the white (PIR) is clearly connected to the battery positive (+). The confirmation of that is in the text below where it state that by using a normal 3 way switch you have the option of having the LED on/off permanently. I don’t know if this is standard procedure for NARVA to give so many wrong information (in writing) out to their customers and suppliers, but I got the feeling that NARVA just buy those lights from China and doesn’t even bother to check what is what..

Just to be clear, if you buy one of these lights, all you need is to have the black to negative and either the red (always on) or white (PIR) connected to the positive, NOT the negative!

You don’t need the switch if you don’t want to, but if you do, any switch that have three positions (top,middle,bottom) to have the light off option or even a standard 2 way switch can be used. Obviously with a 2 way switch you will have the light always on or on only at night with the PIR.

Note that there are still companies out there advertising these lights as multivoltage (9-33Votls)

For example: Automotive Superstore

I hope this will help other customers that do the mistake of believing NARVA descriptions and/or instructions…