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What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

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Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#511
post #235

Lifetime isn't even my #1 concern with LED bulbs. It's strobing/flickering. I film all the LED bulbs I buy in slow motion at 240 fps with an Android phone, and play the movie back on a PC with mplayer using the dot(".") key to move frame by frame. Here is a shot I made comparing 2 brands of LED bulbs: https://youtu.be/QbenId_F2RQ (Edit: yeah you don't have to transfer to a PC, just playing back in slow motion on the…

My Philips Hue bulbs visibly flicker when they are dimmed, but not when they are at full brightness. I never had that problem with the old style bulbs. I wonder if that could be fixed with a firmware update?

Theoretically, they could, but I don't think Philips really has a financial incentive to update anything that "already works"

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only need a rectifier, the transformer is only needed for isolation, if you need that.

You need the transformer to step down the voltage For example: going from 120V AC (in US) down to something the rectifier can use to produce the DC line voltage like 5V. An AC to DC converter will have both a transformer and rectifier.

No, that's almost fractally wrong.

For one, you don't need a transformer for stepping down voltage, as you can see in essentially every piece of consumer electronics nowadays. Your typical CPU nowadays runs in the 1-2 volt range, but PC and laptop power supplies and batteries provide various voltages between 3.3 and 20 V. Your typical desktop mainboard takes most of its power to feed the CPU from the power supply's 12 V rail. Yet, you won't find a single power transformer outside the power supply--the only transformers you will find on a mainboard are probably Ethernet signal transformers.

All of that is done by switching regulators, and those work perfectly fine for regulating 120 V down to 5 V as well.

Then, rectifiers really don't have a problem rectifying 120 V. Some of the cheapest diodes you can find are perfectly capable of rectifying 120 V mains voltage. In fact that works so well that almost every power supply, at least for consumer electronics, nowadays does just that: The input is fed through a rectifier and a filtering capacitor to first to procude (in the case of 120 V input) ~ 170 V DC. After that comes some sort of oscillator that then generates more or less AC from that, but at a much higher frequency, in order to feed that through a transformer--primarily for isolation, but if you have to have a transformer anyway, you might as well use it for reducing the voltage as well. The output from the transformer then is rectified again for most applications, which is a lot more difficult to do efficiently due to the high frequency and the low voltage.

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> flickering at over 50% what does that mean? Duty cycle is 50%, frequency at something Hz? Not being snarky - curious whether there is some kind of standard that your tool compares against. A duty cycle 50% (or any percent really) isn't bad in itself, it's the frequency that is the culprit. Too low PWM freq and you'll notice it.

When I refer to % flicker, I am talking about the modulation % as defined by IEEE 1789-2015 and some documentation from the Illuminating Engineering Society [0][1]. More correctly, invisible flashing is known as the stroboscopic effect or phantom array effect. Two factors are often used to describe flicker for lighting: - Modulation %, a.k.a. % Flicker [The height or modulation of the waveform, formula is 100% * (A -…

I don't think I could have wished for a better answer, thank you. Love it when a new area opens up to me like that! While I'm not active within lighting per se, some of our customers are, and this will help me understand the complexities of their products better. So, thank you, it does help!

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I refer to % flicker, I am talking about the modulation % as defined by IEEE 1789-2015 and some documentation from the Illuminating Engineering Society [0][1]. More correctly, invisible flashing is known as the stroboscopic effect or phantom array effect. Two factors are often used to describe flicker for lighting: - Modulation %, a.k.a. % Flicker [The height or modulation of the waveform, formula is 100% * (A -…

I don't think I could have wished for a better answer, thank you. Love it when a new area opens up to me like that! While I'm not active within lighting per se, some of our customers are, and this will help me understand the complexities of their products better. So, thank you, it does help!

So glad this was useful! Please let me know if there's anything else I can help with lighting-related. I'm super easy to find.

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#515
post #235

Lifetime isn't even my #1 concern with LED bulbs. It's strobing/flickering. I film all the LED bulbs I buy in slow motion at 240 fps with an Android phone, and play the movie back on a PC with mplayer using the dot(".") key to move frame by frame. Here is a shot I made comparing 2 brands of LED bulbs: https://youtu.be/QbenId_F2RQ (Edit: yeah you don't have to transfer to a PC, just playing back in slow motion on the…

I tried this with my office lamps and saw the flickering so I bought the Philips bulbs you linked to. They just arrived and I filmed them but they also show the flickering when filmed on an iPhone in slow-mo mode.

Do I need to buy a specific model of Philips bulbs? Or is my Ikea lamp the culprit now? I paid a ton of money for a certified flicker free monitor so I'm very keen on making sure the lamps are flicker free as well.

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need the transformer to step down the voltage For example: going from 120V AC (in US) down to something the rectifier can use to produce the DC line voltage like 5V. An AC to DC converter will have both a transformer and rectifier.

No, that's almost fractally wrong. For one, you don't need a transformer for stepping down voltage, as you can see in essentially every piece of consumer electronics nowadays. Your typical CPU nowadays runs in the 1-2 volt range, but PC and laptop power supplies and batteries provide various voltages between 3.3 and 20 V. Your typical desktop mainboard takes most of its power to feed the CPU from the power supply's 1…

Thank you! My understanding was out of date.

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just how likely is this to happen though, it would have to be the only light source and be flickering with exactly the same frequency as the machinery is traveling at (which i assume for most devices varies a lot). Not saying it can't happen but it does seem stupidly hard to achieve.

You would also have to ignore or miss any other signs of very fast rotation, such as noise or air movement or the power switch being on.

Someone might hear the noise and feel the vibration but think something is broken inside because the drill isn't rotating. I'm not sure exactly how that would lead to an accident but it might.

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LED flicker could prove harmful or fatal if you work with anything that rotates or reciprocates. The rotating / reciprocating mass may appear stationary at some RPM. Just a reminder to only ever use incandescent or halogen lights around machinery you can touch while in operation: drills, lathes, mills, slotting machines, etc.

Yeah, please don't rely on your eye sight to tell you if a tool is operating. Every time a tool is running you should know it is because you started it to a specific purpose. Before you start a tool you should act out your planned motion. Then start the tool and only perform this motion. If something changes and you cannot complete the motion, stop the tool immediately. Following this and a few other safety tips I've…

> stop the tool immediately

Okay, but, say you've configured the tool wrong and now it's destroying your work. You stop the tool. How soon is it safe to grab your work away from the work surface—i.e. when will it go from "it's too dangerous, let it keep destroying the work" to "it's now slow enough to pull the work off of the tool while it's still—slowly—running, to save the work from further damage"? That's a thing you have to figure out with your eyes (and ears).

Re: What Happened to the 100000 Hour LED Bulbs?

#519
post #235

Lifetime isn't even my #1 concern with LED bulbs. It's strobing/flickering. I film all the LED bulbs I buy in slow motion at 240 fps with an Android phone, and play the movie back on a PC with mplayer using the dot(".") key to move frame by frame. Here is a shot I made comparing 2 brands of LED bulbs: https://youtu.be/QbenId_F2RQ (Edit: yeah you don't have to transfer to a PC, just playing back in slow motion on the…

You say "don't have this problem", but given sufficiently unstable mains input, the Philips bulbs too will do this.

Source: I just had a problem with a malfunctioning light switch (not even a dimming switch, a plain two-state switch) wherein sometimes it would poorly complete the circuit, and one bulb out of the four on the circuit would start oscillating on and off. (If you removed the one bulb, another would start. If you plugged the first bulb back in, in the original slot or another, it would happen to the first bulb only.)

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