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There's something off about LED bulbs

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Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#251

Post by toby- »

reaperman wrote: post #176
formerly_proven wrote: post #24

There's a lot wrong with LEDs in general and retrofit (E27 bulbs) in particular. In no particular order - LED emitters driven hard for cost reasons, age and fail quickly - Power supplies driven hard for cost reasons, age and fail quickly - Poor CRI and SSRI - Flickering - Dim-to-warm is uncommon - Poorly designed power supplies that age and fail quickly - The same light quality is vastly more expensive to achieve wit…

What is "SSRI" in the context of LEDs?

I believe they meant SSI, which is Spectral Similarity Index.

https://www.oscars.org/science-technology/projects/spectral-...

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#252

Post by somehnguy »

organsnyder wrote: post #161
userbinator wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the limits of their ratings. They could make LED bulbs last many orders of magnitude longer and be more efficient, but they don't (unless forced to[1]) because they prefer planned obsolescence. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27093793

I've been installing Kauf brand smart-bulbs, which come pre-flashed with ESPHome for integration with Home Assistant. Some of my earlier bulbs failed, and I recently noticed that the founder of the company commented on the issue and said he specced a more robust capacitor after early failures: https://github.com/KaufHA/kauf-rgbww-bulbs/issues/31#issueco... I haven't contacted them for replacements yet, but seeing the…

Thank you for making me aware those exist. I have a mix of Hue & cheap Walmart color wifi bulbs. The Hue bulbs are undoubtedly much high quality (in both output & reliability) but you pay for it. The Walmart ones are 1/5 the cost, but very hit & miss on whether you can easily flash tasmota/esphome - and there is no way of knowing until you try because of newer firmwares being shipped in the same packaging.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#253

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

DennisP wrote: post #119
fsh wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is quite interesting that 2700K is often considered to be a "normal" color temperature, even though it is much yellower than sunlight (around 5000K, depending on atmospheric scattering). This stems purely from a technological limitation of incandescent bulbs. The bulb filaments simply cannot withstand a temperature significantly above 2700K. Even though LED bulbs have no such limitations, a color temperature of on…

Sunlight is great during the day but in the evening, you want to be closer to the color of sunsets and campfires.

For this reason I think it's great to connect different temperature bulbs to each light switch in your house and switch between them during the day. I keep all of my bulbs on during the daytime and then switch to just the warm ones at night.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#254

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

rusk wrote: post #215
throwaway173738 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, as always, the MBAs.

It’s not MBAs place to set public policy though is it? If it’s the MBA’s fault at all it’s because they’re doing their job which is optimising the product to the market. If the markets not optimising the right things then that’s a failure in the market. Maybe the market is being manipulated somehow has it was for the old incandescent bulbs - but that’s not necessarily the fault of the management tier … some economise…

The problem is that people have a limited amount of caring and markets are really good at taking advantage of consumer ignorance. If you care about color rendering but don't know what color rendering is, you can't shop for it (and if you do know what it is you can't shop for it if it's not on the spec sheet).

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#255

Post by npteljes »

cramjabsyn wrote: post #89

Cheap LED bulbs generate the worst light I’ve ever experienced. But after some research I found that there are options that make a nice warm light with no perceptible flickering. Personally I prefer the phillips warm glow dimmable bulbs

Right up there with the horrible neon light my schools had.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#256

Post by throw0101b »

fsh wrote: post #87
eig wrote: post #6

The irony of this article is that the author is suffering from “too much choice”. LEDs have so much more capability than fluorescent and halogen bulbs that the burden has fallen on the consumer to sort out what dimmability, temperature, and lumens they need. It used to be that you only had one option so you didn’t have to think about it. Anyone who works in stage lighting or art knows that light is complicated. We sh…

It is quite interesting that 2700K is often considered to be a "normal" color temperature, even though it is much yellower than sunlight (around 5000K, depending on atmospheric scattering). This stems purely from a technological limitation of incandescent bulbs. The bulb filaments simply cannot withstand a temperature significantly above 2700K. Even though LED bulbs have no such limitations, a color temperature of on…

There is another benefit to If all your indoor lighting was 5000K, then it would be like you would be living your indoor life constantly at noon.

It's why software like f.lux was created (and the functionality has been incorporated into some OSes as well).

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#257

Post by amluto »

titzer wrote: post #141
amluto wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same light quality is vastly more expensive to achieve with LEDs, even if you account for high electricity prices. In a screw base, maybe. But compare: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/luminus-devices-i... $25 for an excellent 700mA driver, 86% efficient. https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/bridgelux/BXRH-30... $3.45 for a very nice, ~2000lm 97 CRI LED, about 99 lm/W. (Efficiency goes up quite…

Your comment is just regurgitating tech specs. In reality, the bulbs that are at hand vary so much in quality, that tech spec discussions are almost useless. The flickering is a real issue. I'm not aware of any standard way of rating the flickering of LED bulbs; they can vary from really bad (literally dark 50% of the duty cycle because one stupid diode) to decent (bidirectional diodes), to very good (full voltage re…

It’s not, though.

First, this driver actually specifies flicker, and it has a credible number. Second, I own several and have tested them. Performance is excellent. It dims well, too. If you want a crappy driver, you don’t need to spend $25 for it :)

Second, this LED chip is a serious one, with a serious data sheet, intended for people building their own fixtures.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#258

Post by simongray »

This article and comment section is bizarre to me. It's like travelling back in time to the 2000s.

We've only used LEDs in my country for, what, 15 years now? They are perfectly fine, no issues really, much cheaper than incandescent bulbs of course. We just buy the ones in IKEA and they haven't really failed us so far.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#259

Post by MBCook »

alistairSH wrote: post #53
eig wrote: post #6

The irony of this article is that the author is suffering from “too much choice”. LEDs have so much more capability than fluorescent and halogen bulbs that the burden has fallen on the consumer to sort out what dimmability, temperature, and lumens they need. It used to be that you only had one option so you didn’t have to think about it. Anyone who works in stage lighting or art knows that light is complicated. We sh…

It used to be that you only had one option so you didn’t have to think about it. But, that single option was at least "good enough". I never bought a normal incandescent bulb only to have the color rendering/brightness/etc be downright awful. LEDs come packaged as "daylight" or "bright white" or whatever else. I want one that's labelled "just like your normal 60W incandescent".

> But, that single option was at least "good enough".

Was it? Or was it what we were all used to, good or not, so we accepted it as good/correct.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#260

Post by amluto »

megous wrote: post #199
amluto wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same light quality is vastly more expensive to achieve with LEDs, even if you account for high electricity prices. In a screw base, maybe. But compare: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/luminus-devices-i... $25 for an excellent 700mA driver, 86% efficient. https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/bridgelux/BXRH-30... $3.45 for a very nice, ~2000lm 97 CRI LED, about 99 lm/W. (Efficiency goes up quite…

Heatsink costs?

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/led-thermal-produ...

A whole fixture with nice components like this is not cheap.

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