There's something off about LED bulbs • Hacker News Board

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#611

Post by vl » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 6:09 PM UTC

jghn wrote: post #526

chongli wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big problem for me is, as a consumer, how do I know that brand X is producing quality bulbs that'll last a long time? The issue is that LED bulbs aren’t simple devices like incandescent bulbs. LED bulbs have an electronic power supply inside which drives the LEDs at a constant current. Power supply design is a major subfield of electronics engineering and there are all kinds of tradeoffs you can make to optimize…

Yes, but this is exactly what I'm asking. How do I find the ones designed in a buy it for life way? Or at least ones designed to last longer than the crap on the Home Depot shelves.

You can't buy a bulb that is rated to last a lifetime, but you can buy ones rated to last for 10+ years if used 8 hours a day (i.e. 35,000 life hours).

I retrofitted entire house - 200+ bulbs and fixture retrofits more that 5 years ago. I had one or failures since. I bought highest CRI bulbs, i.e. most expensive, and they work well. (Also, do not use bulbs for downlights - get entire "led can light fixture retrofit")

I used 1000bulbs.com because I can filter/read specs there, but you can get specs for any high-tier vendor and buy elsewhere.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#612

Post by bombcar » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 6:09 PM UTC

dawnerd wrote: post #588

bombcar wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've started marking LED bulbs as "not for enclosed fixtures" which is .... 90% of existing fixtures? They overheat and die really fast if used in something that's not vented/cooled. You need fixtures that fully expose the bulb so it doesn't burn itself out. Amusing that LED bulbs, the energy savers, die from excess heat .

And if you want enclosed rated bulbs there’s not many choices. The GE ones I picked up flicker like crazy.

I've taken to just replacing fixtures instead of trying to make bulbs work with existing, though I'm --> <-- this close to just throwing them all away and going back to kerosene lanterns and some incandescents.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#613

Post by userbinator » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 6:09 PM UTC

jsheard wrote: post #127

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

More recently Philips has started selling the Dubai-style bulbs worldwide, branded as the "Ultra Efficient" range. They're expensive though, as you'd expect.

I believe BigClive did a video on those, and while they did indeed use more LEDs for improved efficiency, they also had a more complex and thus failure-prone driver than the original Dubai ones.

In other words, more efficient, but not longer lifespan.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#614

Post by xxs » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 6:10 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #388

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I harvest the LEDs out of dead bulbs to use in hobby projects. This is a great idea and I would love it if you would post a Youtube how-to video. It might encourage a bunch of hobbyists to do something useful with those dead bulbs. I've had a number of LED's fail after only a year or two, in fact more quickly than the average incandescent bulb. Seems like it defeats the whole purpose of "upgrading" and in fact may…

The LEDs are surface mount (although big surface mount components, so not particularly difficult to work with). I desolder them with hot air (although you can totally do it with a soldering iron), then use them later as any other surface mount LED. I don't have access to YouTube right now, so can't search for you, but there are tons of videos covering how to desolder and solder surface mount components. I'd be willin…

LEDs tend to be mounted on heat sinks, so de-soldering sort of sucks.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#615

Post by tomtheelder » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 6:11 PM UTC

jryb wrote: post #589

I don't understand any of this at all. I got the cheap 2700K LED bulbs from a big box store (~$3 for a pack/bulb, I don't remember) and they are wonderful, they're just as good as they were when I got them, and the spectrum feels the same as an incandescent bulb. I literally put no thought into the purchasing process and it couldn't be more ideal.

Agree completely. I bought a bunch of LED bulbs maybe a decade ago to replace my incandescent ones. Lighting quality was immediately better, and I have never had to replace a single one. They have made multiple moves with me. Previously I was replacing bulbs maybe annually, or every 2 years.

I genuinely have no idea what people in this thread are talking about.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#616

Post by bmacho » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 6:11 PM UTC

Of course. It's the market and negative selection. The companies that accidentally made long-lasting LED bulbs all went bankrupt.

Governments (or other non-profit organizations) should create light bulbs, for the people, and not for the stockholders.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#617

Post by susanasj » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 6:11 PM UTC

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…

"cost optimization and general apathy towards the customer." that's just this stage of capitalism unfortunately. Take an airplane trip and you will experience similar effects.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#618

Post by JohnFen » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 6:12 PM UTC

xxs wrote: post #556

JohnFen wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low voltage DC lighting is a thing that has existed for a very, very long time. That most houses don't have it is more cultural than anything else, in my opinion. That means it's totally fixable. You can install such a system in existing buildings right now, and it's not crazy expensive unless you want to run the wires inside the walls. If we could shift cultural expectations around this, adding a LV system in new co…

12V requires quite a lot of amps for enough light, so low DC is not optimal. Also LEDs are current driven devices, i.e. they will be sensitive to voltage changes (even with a current limiting resistor)

Low-voltage doesn't necessarily mean 12V. I think it's anything below about 50, although lighting systems currently marketed as "low voltage" are usually 12 or 24 volts.

The constant current thing is true, but that's not a terribly difficult problem.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#619

Post by vitaflo » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 6:12 PM UTC

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #382

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As a side point, the bulbs from the link you shared might be of good quality but very, very low power by my standards. In order to work comfortably I need "200W replacements", not 40W-60W. This has enormous influence on my mood in winter months, probably people in warmer climates care less.

They also sell 100w equivalents (1600 lumens) in an A12 form factor, FWIW.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#620

Post by jacobsenscott » Thu, Mar 30, 2023, 6:12 PM UTC

No less that half my led can lights are unusable - either they "burned out" (whatever that means for an led light, but they did), or they flicker too much or buzz too loudly. I gave up on replacing them and am just living with the ones that work. I don't know where to buy good ones - the led market 99% scammers. The crap at the big box hardware stores is not worth it. I've probably spent more money in one year on defective leds lights than I spent on incandescent bulbs in 40 years.