Can someone please make an “archive.is” clone that just does GPT summaries for us HN folk?
There's something off about LED bulbs
411–420 of 966 posts
Re: There's something off about LED bulbs
#412The 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…
> Even though LED bulbs have no such limitations, a color temperature of only 2700K is often chosen.
I think there's a reason for this, which is that sunlight supplements indoor lighting during the day. People rely on indoor lighting more at night when those warmer tones are most desirable.
Re: There's something off about LED bulbs
#413I 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…
just because somebody decides to geek out about LED bulbs, does't mean all those stats that are theoretically measurable actually make a difference.
the 4-for-$10 A19 LED bulbs from amazon or ikea are flicker free to my eyes. i've bought some fancy bulbs with big metal heatsink bases, supposed "high CRI" ratings, equivalently high price tags. to my eyes, i can't see the difference. the super-cheap bulbs from one of those amazon marketplace sellers with a randomly generated name are flickery, but just going up to anything other than the absolute bare minimum of quality is good enough. "what the peasants get to use" is because that's actually probably good enough for what us peasants need. if you want to geek out about super high-end LEDs, you're not going to find that in consumer-grade products and that's probably fine.
Re: There's something off about LED bulbs
#414There'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…
Primarily it is the E27 bulbs that are the problem. Designed to ease people into simple replacement into the old light sockets 10+ years ago. Now in 2023 the new LED products with the well designed power supplies work much better and efficiency. The author mentions renovations, but still using ancient fixtures, wiring and switches. A new house, or partial renovation, should now be wired with 24v for all wall and ceiling lights.
Re: There's something off about LED bulbs
#415That article was feverish. I think the author is making it a bit too complicated. Also, there's much talk about the Met and their art collection. Even with the challenges of LED bulbs, they wouldn't go back. Damaging UV is no longer a problem with LEDs.
Re: There's something off about LED bulbs
#416I think most people in this audience are aware but in case some are not, the other thing with LED is that it is not possible to dim them. So dimming works by making them flash at a higher frequency than what the human eye can see. Which is ok-ish for humans, but will drive dogs crazy as they see at a much higher frame rate.
That's not fundamental. They could flicker the individual LEDs at different phases. A typical bulb contains many LEDs. This would cost money, of course.
Re: There's something off about LED bulbs
#417Earlier 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…
I think this falls apart in the details. LEDs want constant current power supplies, and their owners frequently want them to dim. So you will still need a power supply.
You can fudge it with resisters like in an LED strip, but you lose efficiency and dimming quality.
That being said, I expect that power supplies with 48VDC input or so would be cheaper.
Re: There's something off about LED bulbs
#418Non-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-dimmable LEDs are right up there with running toilets and rodents in the pantheon of things to make homeowners lose their minds. Really? I've never understood the affection for dimming lights. Essentially always I want lights on or off.
One example is my living room. Sometimes I'm hosting people over, and I just want the whole room to be really bright as we're all gathering around, talking, maybe playing games, etc. I want that room practically as bright as I can get it during those times.
But other times I'm just wanting to cozy up to the fireplace with a book and some light music and a dram of whiskey late in the evening. I don't need the room to be super bright, so I might just have the lights over the fireplace on set very dimly.
Same goes with the kitchen. When I'm actively cooking a meal, I want it very bright. But I don't always need it that bright, sometimes I just want it a bit more ambient in its lighting.
Or the dining room. Sometimes I use that space for projects as it has the large table, and I'll want it as bright as possible. But other times, I could probably stand to have it at about 75% of its brightness as we're just sitting around together having a meal, and with my home layout its a bit of a central space so its nice having it at like 20% brightness to act as a bit of a night light as people go through the house.
Re: There's something off about LED bulbs
#419I was just staying in a hotel where it was obvious that the hallway lighting was all LED.
It had that harsh, strange white hue to it and I found it incredibly distracting and unattractive.
I'm no expert in the field, and I assume there are bulbs that put out a more natural spectrum, but clearly this hotel didn't buy those bulbs. It felt strange to walk down that hallway, just something "off" about it.
Re: There's something off about LED bulbs
#420The piece lost me when it mentioned the LED flaking out with a dimmer. That's a well-known shortcoming of "average" LED bulbs (whose drivers cannot cope with the decreased peaks that come with a standard dimmer).
Most of it felt like what things would be like if you had frequent brownouts or just a bad electrical setup.
[edit]: tried again and stopped when it mentioned painting LED bulbs in amber varnish. I have RGBW LED strips, getting a "beautiful" tone is a solved problem.