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There's something off about LED bulbs

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Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#841

Post by notjtrig »

samtho wrote: post #643
int0x2e wrote: post #440

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…

I'm interested in installing your design in my cabin as well, could also be very useful for boats too.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#842

Post by zerocrates »

zippergz wrote: post #335
rootusrootus wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am also in the Europe, most other commenters seem to be from the US. You're falling for the "Europe is better than the US, of course" mindset. What you are actually seeing are partisans spinning a narrative to fit their ideology, not an accurate description of reality. We have really high CRI bulbs here, too, and they're inexpensive. I can go down to the home store and buy them by the dozen. I'll bet you money th…

Please link me to a 95+ CRI bulb available at Home Depot or Lowe's.

Needing to replace a 100W incandescent recently, I bought this:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/EcoSmart-100-Watt-Equivalent-A19...

Home Depot's "Ecosmart" store brand, claims 95 CRI, and has admirable dimming performance even on the cheapo not-designed-for-LED dimmer I have on the fixture. And it has a more even and omnidirectional pattern of illumination than typical LED bulbs.

Of course, time will be the only real judge.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#843

Post by throwaway290 »

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…

Add to that spiky spectrum. Incandescent bulbs give black body radiation, a solid spectrum. Regular LED lights spike in RGB to achieve a neutral color. Can cause metamerism in photos and just looks bad IMO.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#844

Post by Self-Perfection »

thuttinger wrote: post #703
leobg wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great site. I wish he had an English translation. But I forgive him. This is what the Internet should be! Individual people who do one thing really well. So happy to see that this still exists online.

There is one guy that does the same for batteries, chargers, power supplies and more: https://lygte-info.dk/

Guess what. Lamptest guy from my comment above tests batteries as well. Here are his websites for this project (same data but different design): https://battest.ru/ https://batterytest.ru/

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#845

Post by Smoosh »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #835
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…

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.

Me too - standard 12V and 5V rails run throughout the house would be great. I even thought about a wallpaper with conductive strips so the power could be invisibly delivered to any part of any room and "tapped" with a push-into-the-wall socket.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#846

Post by zaroth »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #778
zaroth wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You go where the people who might know better talk about these things! AV forums for picking a TV or projector, cooking forums for picking a knife set, and HN, you know, for picking the contrast level of your text.

For most of my purchases, I cannot find any trustworthy content at all. This experience is shared by 90% of people I talk to

I feel like I’ve been able to make decently informed choices without too much hassle…

Recent purchases include usb cables, rechargeable batteries & USB power pack, LCD monitor, SSDs, multivitamins, torque wrench, belt sander, pressure washer, washing machine, gluten-free pastas and baking mixes, video games…

LED bulbs are kind of a pathological case, along with things like USB cables, speaker wire... If you want something better than the lowest common denominator it’s very hard because they are nearly indistinguishable from the outside and take a long time to fail.

But for example shopping and comparing washing machines online wasn’t terrible. You can narrow down the list very easily based on your requirements and budget, probably you end up with 2 choices that both seem great, you can watch videos of them running, and then you pick the one assembled in your home country or the one that makes a more pleasant ding when it turns on, and call it a day? Obviously the “reviews” are all fake, but the point isn’t for someone to tell you what to buy, but that all the options are readily discoverable while I’m lying in bed on my phone.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#847

Post by ntr-- »

fsh wrote: post #365
throw0101b wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I believe this is more folklore than science. A significant color shift happens only for a couple of minutes during sunrise and sunset. The change in brightness is probably significant, but it is hard to believe that the color has a significant physiological effect (but the placebo could be very strong!). In my experience, f.lux and co. make it pretty difficult to read text due to the low contrast, and simply changin…

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30311830/

> Further analysis of these 15 reports indicated that a two-hour exposure to blue light (460 nm) in the evening suppresses melatonin, the maximum melatonin-suppressing effect being achieved at the shortest wavelengths (424 nm, violet)

> The melatonin concentration recovered rather rapidly, within 15 min from cessation of the exposure, suggesting a short-term or simultaneous impact of light exposure on the melatonin secretion.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#848

Post by nabilhat »

JohnFen wrote: post #198
DougN7 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just an anecdote, but I’ve had multiple “10 year” LED bulbs fail after just a year or two. I suspect much of the claims for these bulbs are theoretical as they just don’t hold up, probably for reasons the grandparent poster is pointing out.

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…

> Almost all LED bulb failures are because the power supply died due to overheating, not the LEDs themselves.

It's true that the power supply versions are so poorly designed and inefficient that heat is a problem. Design and quality control effort could reduce heat generated by the entire assembly to a fraction of what the socket, fixture, and wiring can sink.

It's more common now to find bulbs that have no power supply at all. They're literally a rectifier made of LED's in series. If the bulb flashes at 2 * mains frequency, that's likely what you have. They die out quickly because the LED strings add up to a maximum voltage a bit over mains voltage, but that's RMS not peak. It's a natural outcome, as using enough LED's to accomodate peak voltage reduces light output by underdriving them, increases obvious flicker from dwell time below minimum voltage, and increases cost.

Hotwired LED strings are cheaper to design, source, assemble, bad parts fail fast more consistently with no effort wasted on quality control, and the market's so flooded and volatile that there's no room for consumer side quality awareness effective enough to make the negative outcomes matter. Power supplies in these bulbs are going away. Ubiquitous 2 * mains frequency strobing, short-lived, hotwired LED bulbs is where the home LED lighting market is taking us.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#849

Post by Zak »

Someone1234 wrote: post #758
foobarian wrote: post #66

I had an epiphany this year that I don't need to conform to the lightbulb socket interface any longer, now that things like straight-wired LED modules [1] are available. They waste a lot less space on unnecessary hardware, and can therefore fill more space with useful light producing material. I've been slowly converting my big round ceiling fixtures and the light and dimming performance is nothing short of miraculou…

So now changing the "lightbulb" becomes an infinitely harder task, and in some areas requires you to pull a permit and or hire an electrician (e.g. do you think a retiree is going to change this themselves?). This seems nice predicated that LEDs last 10-years or longer, which per the article and elsewhere isn't the case. This movement away from standard bulb-sockets to direct wiring is short-term-ism at its finest. L…

I remember watching a documentary long ago about the history of computing. In it, someone expressed skepticism of transistor-based integrated circuits because unlike vacuum tubes, the transistors in an IC couldn't be replaced when they failed.

I've replaced a couple ceiling sockets with panel-type LED fixtures and they're going strong years later. Perhaps they'll fail eventually, but their lifespan has far exceeded anything I've screwed into a socket, so the increased replacement effort/cost has already paid for itself.

Re: There's something off about LED bulbs

#850

Post by Dalewyn »

DougN7 wrote: post #135
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…

This is just an anecdote, but I’ve had multiple “10 year” LED bulbs fail after just a year or two. I suspect much of the claims for these bulbs are theoretical as they just don’t hold up, probably for reasons the grandparent poster is pointing out.

If you look closely on the box you'll probably find the "10 year" claims are based off something stupid like 2 hours use per day.

The way most people use lighting goes far beyond whatever the manufacturers want to foist.

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