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There's something off about LED bulbs

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Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#831
post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are finned LED bulbs which can fit standard Edison Screw sockets, e.g.: https://www.designboom.com/technology/self-cooling-100-watt-... > https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b5/c2/c5/b5c2c5d69fb240a571ba... > It's also helpful to recognise that existing lighting fixtures and lamps were designed around the constraints of incandescent bulbs. The first generation of LED bulbs and lamps largely conform to these. As LEDs…

I sure hope 12V doesn’t happen. 12V is absurdly low for lighting and needs extremely thick wires to get decent efficiency. 24V is okay. 48V would be nicer for indoor use.

Fair enough. DC then, of some reasonable voltage.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#833
post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're willing to share your design, I'm sure there are other folks like myself who think this is a cool idea. I've wanted to do PoE (or passive PoE) for lights for a while now...

I am going to open source it. The goal was to be able to get all the SMD stuff available at JLPCB so you can just send it to be fabbed (with some thru-hole components you would just solder yourself) or I would also sell them at cost + 10%. My brother designed some 802.3at chips and was going to have him review my work first as I don't want to send out into the world a poorly design power system (there are enough of t…

Cant see any github link in your profile. Any way I can get notified when you open source this? Thank you.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#834

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have two products where one lists a metric proudly and the other doesn't, I think most consumers would choose the one with the metric.

Only if consumers understand the metric. Otherwise, one product's metric is another product's meaningless buzzword.

I would argue most consumers don't really understand the metrics. People will compare which computer has more GB of RAM, but fail to take into account which type it is or how necessary it is for their use case. It's especially common in the food industry- it's funny how often some products are market "gluten free" even though nobody who knows what gluten is would think to find it in a can of tomatoes. It's pervasiveness surely means it's effective.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#835

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…

I wondered for a long time why we don't have standard built-in DC in building codes that could power our lights, and most electronic devices. Really the few things in my house that require full line voltage are all in the kitchen. Everything else has a transformer attached.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#836
I'm not really into the details like this post was, I liked the cfl bulbs bright white. I've been trying to find bulbs like that color in the led space. My go to is the home Depot branded led that have the coils in them, and I try to do bright white. They cost more then what the cfl bulbs did which sucks. The led lights also seem to not last as long, but I do think it's been getting better. I do have two wifi wiz bulbs and they have not died, been with them for 3 years. I say bring back the spiral bulbs and let the consumers choose.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And this is the exact reason that the market for good quality LEDs is so small. You care about price but not light quality (primarily CRI but also flicker and dimmability). That's fine, it's totally your decision to make. But the two products are incredibly far from equivalent.

I mean there’s gotta be some reasonable price limit where you stop blaming the consumer. If each supposedly higher-quality LED bulb is $50,000 are you still blaming the consumer? Especially when the consumer has can’t realistically even know if they’re going to get a higher quality bulb or just a $5 bulb resold for $50,000.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#840

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simpler and better light, but bad energy efficiency. Although, as was pointed out to me at some point, because LEDs are more efficient, people feel less guilty about having more of them; replacing 1x40 watt bulb with 8x5 watt LEDs means the net result is the same. I've got like 7 cute LED spotlights in my TV closet for example, I wouldn't have had that setup if I was forced to use incandescent lamps.

Energy efficiency wise, in cold weather it warms the apartment which is desirable in my case.

Little downside if you have electric heating, but if you have natural gas heating the electric heating is probably more expensive.
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