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There's something off about LED bulbs

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Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#351

Post by Kalium »

brodouevencode wrote: post #218
basch wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that doesnt really fix the flickering problem.

I had one room that had a flicker problem. Replaced the fixture (was going to do this anyway because The Wife Said So) and it went away. I guess that's why some of the complaints seem foreign to me.

A lot of people, including this article, blame flickering on bulbs. Usually because introducing an LED bulb is what shows the issue.

That the underlying issue might be the fixture, or in the older electrical system, is not always an intuitive jump.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#352

Post by coryrc »

cogman10 wrote: post #222
JohnFen wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all LED bulb failures are because the power supply died due to overheating, not the LEDs themselves. I harvest the LEDs out of dead bulbs to use in hobby projects. With Edison-style bulbs, anyway, the orientation they're mounted in makes a huge amount of difference. They're last a lot longer if they're oriented upright (base down) than in any other orientation because it reduces the heat buildup in the power s…

This is the frustrating thing about LEDs that IDK we can change. If there was a "DC" light socket in the house we could have LEDs outlasting owners, and for cheap. Nearly all the expense of LED bulbs is the power supply. Everything else is dirt cheap. A single home DC power supply with ~200W of output could light an entire house, flicker free. What's even more frustrating is I think we could fix it. A national regula…

LEDs must be powered by a constant-current supply, and distribution does not work well at constant-current, and is always constant voltage. So no matter what you will need some sort of switching power supply.

LEDs are like 15% efficient and power supplies are >95%. They just need to be separated slightly so the LEDs aren't heating the power supply. Most recessed LED lighting now has a separate junction box with the power supply.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#353

Post by eschneider »

Majromax wrote: post #330
eschneider wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like an excellent business opportunity.

> This seems like an excellent business opportunity. Consumer education is rarely an excellent business opportunity. Consumers are very good at comparing prices, and "incandescent watt equivalent" labels provide an understandable comparator for light output. Beyond that, the statistics become much less meaningful. Consumers typically don't read colour temperature ratings (in black-body Kelvin), but instead follow "wa…

I expect the 'premium' light bulb market is similar to the mechanical keyboard market. Good products and good prices will find a small but dedicated market and build a good rep.

Do it right, and eventually your best customers will tell their friends to 'just buy brand "X"' and you can expand from there.

Is this a good plan to take over the bulb market? No. But a good product could be a nice, sustainable business.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#354

Post by jwestbury »

eimrine wrote: post #95
QuarterReptile wrote: post #2

Non-dimmable bulbs are the author's problem. First, bans on incandescent bulbs are foolish because they encourage defeatist foolishness like this article (as far as I can tell, for the sake of virtue signaling and modest acceleration of a change that was already happening.) The CFLs which preceded LEDs were really awful, especially for closets (where they'll linger for decades, given the low utilization of those bulb…

Non-dimmableness is only one of the problems. For me the biggest problem is that all LEDs are blue, despite of any light-filters. I can not use it in bedroom when I use to read books before sleep and in bathroom when my aestetical needs of seing bare body have been not met. I have even changed my place of living since Sodium lamps have been replaced with LEDs on my old street. And if I need a really bright light or r…

> For me the biggest problem is that all LEDs are blue, despite of any light-filters.

It's likely that you're buying bulbs with a low CRI. Unfortunately, this is poorly-marketed (and CRI still doesn't capture certain edge cases).

I'm a fairly serious amateur photographer, and until I moved overseas, I'd set up a room as an edit and print studio, with a pro-grade photo printer. I specifically sourced high-CRI bulbs, and found that my eye couldn't tell the difference between my room at night (with a measured color temperature of 4500K or so) and my room during the day with the blinds open (with about the same color temperature), even looking at a variety of photo prints.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#355

Post by vlunkr »

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".

And the single option was cheap. There are cheap LEDs, but they're going to flicker, or hum audibly, and die quickly (contrary to the advertising). It's taken many rounds of trial and error, many wasted dollars, and I still don't love the bulbs I've landed on that much.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#356

Post by samtho »

wlesieutre wrote: post #299
petra wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would this system need new electrical wiring ?

Yes. For the commercial DC lighting installations I've seen they were using power over ethernet. That's not necessarily the only way to deliver DC power but whatever you do it's going to be wired differently from 120 VAC.

I used to do electrical installs in commercial buildings and this was starting to catch on, mainly because the the practice of running ethernet (including the 8P8C aka RJ45 connector, patch paneling, etc) is already established. This always felt very roundabout and requires expensive networking equipment just to run lights which I do not personally like because it will just cause confusion.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#357

Post by ChadMoran »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #228
tomatotomato37 wrote: post #150

I hate how many of these things aren't limits of the technology but rather the result of cost optimization and general apathy towards the customer. We know how to mass-produce quality LEDs to the point entire TVs are made of the things. We know how to mass-produce rectifiers pretty much ever since diodes existed. We know how to cool mass-produced objects in compact spaces. But because we apparently can't have nice th…

You can go buy high CRI, high quality bulbs right now. Nothing is stopping you. Here is one common vendor: https://store.waveformlighting.com/collections/a19-bulbs/ The issue isn’t that MBAs have cost reduced bulbs for no reason. The issue is that 95% of consumers will only choose the cheap bulbs, period. As a result, that’s what gets produced at scale. > We know how to mass-produce quality LEDs to the point entire T…

I've been looking for solid high CRI LED bulbs, thank you.

Lately I've been using the GE Reveal/Relax. They were better than the contractor grade bulbs that came with the house but still just... wasn't there.

If you know any other manufacturers like this I'd greatly appreciate it if you could provide their links.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#358

Post by zaroth »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #287
cogman10 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the frustrating thing about LEDs that IDK we can change. If there was a "DC" light socket in the house we could have LEDs outlasting owners, and for cheap. Nearly all the expense of LED bulbs is the power supply. Everything else is dirt cheap. A single home DC power supply with ~200W of output could light an entire house, flicker free. What's even more frustrating is I think we could fix it. A national regula…

We've had 2 standard DC outlets for a while now: 12V cigarette lighter and 5V USB. You do often see them in odd places. But the voltage and wattage of those specs is too low to be useful, so they haven't evolved into DC power distribution. USB-C PD is at a useful voltage & wattage level, and so is Ethernet POE. I wouldn't be surprised to see them start to be used for general power distribution in niche applications,…

Cars are starting to move to 48V DC. My under cabinet lighting in the kitchen are powered by DC from a power supply in the basement.

I could definitely see this becoming more common. Powering the ~100 watts of fixed lighting spread across my whole house on ten different 15A 120v circuits, each with their own arcfault breaker and 12 gauge copper electrical lines running back to the panel is fabulously expensive for what could be done with a bunch of CAT5 in each floor running to some conveniently located “POE injector” type devices.

You would want to be able to take a standard fixture and just push DC through it and use special bulbs with a standard A19 base, but that’s problematic when the next owner tries to screw in a standard bulb - what happens when it sees 48V DC?

I would guess if for safety reasons it has to be a non-A19 connector, then your light fixture choices get cut down to almost nothing and no one will make the switch?

It’s really interesting to think about, most everything I’m plugging into AC outlets in my house, the first step is converting it to DC. A lot of my outlets I’ve switched to include USB ports so I don’t need the wall warts. If you have solar and battery backup even more-so you start to question why we are wasting so much money moving everything back and forth between DC/AC/DC within a house.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#359

Post by roughly »

brodouevencode wrote: post #147
doitLP wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out https://www.waveformlighting.com/ for some very high quality LEDs and education about how they work.

I can't imagine paying $150 for a six pack, when Home Depot's private label LEDs are $12 for a six pack. I could replace it 10 times before I hit that mark - not sure it's worth that.

I hear you, but I bought two waveforms just to try them out, and they're absolutely incredible. It's a shockingly better light than the $2 home depot light. It's the equivalent of going from an underpowered computer to one that's up to the job - you don't really notice how bad the old one was until you get something up to the task.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#360

Post by bandyaboot »

greggsy wrote: post #273
throwaway173738 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, as always, the MBAs.

I have an MBA. It’s not mine or any of my peer’s jobs to provide crap products to ends users - thats up to shareholders to decide.

So what would you say you do here?
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