LED Light Bulbs - why?

[Jeff7]

The Light Bulb Conspiracy
Planned Obsolescence

http://news.consumerreports.org/hom...b-conspiracy-probes-planned-obsolescence.html

http://conspiracy.wikia.com/wiki/Light_bulb_conspiracy

It's all about cost, I'm sure. We used 10,000hr incandescent bulbs in small traffic control signs at work. They're effectively made to run at 130VAC, but they're run at the usual 110-120VAC. It's simply a more robust filament.

And probably a touch of planned obsolescence.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I still haven't replaced anything with LED bulbs yet, however, when my incandescent bulbs die in my home theater, I'll probably replace them with LEDs. Right now I have 3 40 watt bulbs in the main theater area, and then a single 60 watt bulb at the bottom of the basement stairs ... the 3 x 40 watt bulbs are usually set VERY dim to make just enough light so that people can find their way around the room without bumping into things. Ideally, these would be 100 lumens or less. The bottom of the stairs I like a bit brighter, but doesn't have to be like the sun. dimmable CFLs suck.

 

[WackyDan]

I've had great luck with CFL's around the house... But that is due to a few aspects of their use.

- I don't put them in fixtures that are randomly on and off in short cycles of use. (Bad for CFLs)
- I don't place them in sockets that have them upside down - spiral down (Bad for CFLs due to the way the base is designed, some newer CFLs may have solved this issue)
- I don't use them in extremely humid environments like bathrooms (Bad for CFLs and I lost a good few due to this)

I used a 23/100 watt CFL in our light post our front. Turns on and burns from dusk till dawn every day. The one in there is well into three years of use. So I don't have the hassle of replacing old fashioned bulbs or the energy cost associated with them... That one is indeed saving me money.

 

[Mixolydian]

I have LED retrofits in recessed cans and CFL's everywhere else. Never had a problem with either type of lamp.

 

[Rubycon]

Here is a few handy tips.
For the not dimmable lights, i have taken a practical approach. Instead of buying one 10 watt led lamp that is very expensive, i search for lamp armatures that can hold at least 3 led lamps. Then i just buy the 1.2 watt price discount led lamps. and together these lamps can provide enough light to satisfy my requirements. Because of the low wattage, these lamps do not get hot or breakdown as easily as the higher wattage led lamps.

Why not start with discrete emitters and use your own driver? You can run them directly off a DC SMPS, etc. A control input will control brightness to your liking and tint control is possible with PWM management although unless your application is color critical this is not really necessary.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Why not start with discrete emitters and use your own driver? You can run them directly off a DC SMPS, etc. A control input will control brightness to your liking and tint control is possible with PWM management although unless your application is color critical this is not really necessary.

You are right that it is the best way. However, i need to rewire everything and make special casings. We have done such projects on work before, though. Color temperature adjustable lighting in special lightning armatures. But everything was specially made. Nothing was "of the shelf" with exception of the components of course. I have at least one (adaptor powered) led lamp at the moment at home where i made the dc dc converter myself and led with heatsink retrofitted where once the little incandescent bulb was. But for the 230V, I have to do to much changes to the house. I am planning however to refit a lamp armature such as this with leds under microcontroller control. Create a flickering effect for ambiance or just stable light output.

Very expensive, so i am searching to find one second hand.
I will place it above my dining table.

 

[sswingle]

I love these that Lowes sells: http://www.lowes.com/pd_338931-7577...l=1&currentURL=?Ntt=led+light+bulb&facetInfo=

They are nice and bright, and the color temp looks like normal incandescent. Most people that are over don't even realize that they aren't regular incandescent.

 

[purplebeeper123]

THE GOD DAMN GREENIES WANT TO TAKE AWAY OUR PHREEDOM! I SAY,, WE SHOULD ALL USE INCUNDESCANT BULB TO PISS THEM OFF AND KILL POLAR BEARS,,,,, thx gl.

 

[Rubycon]

You are right that it is the best way. However, i need to rewire everything and make special casings. We have done such projects on work before, though. Color temperature adjustable lighting in special lightning armatures. But everything was specially made. Nothing was "of the shelf" with exception of the components of course. I have at least one (adaptor powered) led lamp at the moment at home where i made the dc dc converter myself and led with heatsink retrofitted where once the little incandescent bulb was. But for the 230V, I have to do to much changes to the house. I am planning however to refit a lamp armature such as this with leds under microcontroller control. Create a flickering effect for ambiance or just stable light output.

Very expensive, so i am searching to find one second hand.
I will place it above my dining table.

Just remember that most LED "flicker" simulated approach to candle/oil flames is still quite coarse. Most candle/oil lamps in a home environment have very little flicker from flame movement.

Employing an ultrasonic anemometer you could create an effect that would react to air movement such as someone walking by. Warm LEDs such as CREE XMLs in the center with a surrounding envelope of LISA plastics gimbled so it moves just like a real flame. That's about as real as it gets without having a dangerous flame...

 

[William Gaatjes]

Just remember that most LED "flicker" simulated approach to candle/oil flames is still quite coarse. Most candle/oil lamps in a home environment have very little flicker from flame movement.

Employing an ultrasonic anemometer you could create an effect that would react to air movement such as someone walking by. Warm LEDs such as CREE XMLs in the center with a surrounding envelope of LISA plastics gimbled so it moves just like a real flame. That's about as real as it gets without having a dangerous flame...

I was thinking of a few high power leds and a few smaller low power leds (for flicker generation only). The high power leds get modulated together with the low power leds for the effect.

Lisa plastic ?
What kind of plastic is that ?

 

[Rubycon]

I was thinking of a few high power leds and a few smaller low power leds (for flicker generation only). The high power leds get modulated together with the low power leds for the effect.

Lisa plastic ?
What kind of plastic is that ?

LISA is short for licht sammeln which in German means light collecting.
It was an 80s fad that never really took off with the advent of CCFL and LED.

A sheet of this stuff - often with tint that fluoresces strongly under longwave uv radiation - will appear to have brightly glowing edges just sitting on a table. A few blacklight blue bulbs really hasten the effect without no perceivable ancillary source to most users.

 

[RossMAN]

What do you guys think? No heat sink which is weird.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects...ost-energy-efficient-lightbu?ref=discover_pop

Would you pay $30 for the 10w LED?

 

[SparkyJJO]

That's a weird looking sucker.

 

[edro]

What do you guys think? No heat sink which is weird.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects...ost-energy-efficient-lightbu?ref=discover_pop
Would you pay $30 for the 10w LED?

Pretty impressive.
That circuit board looks like a 2 sided metal core board.
12W isn't too much to dissipate across that much surface area.
I would like to know the junction temperature those LEDs are running at.

Those LEDs are cheap Chinese imitation LEDs.
They don't have the same quality control as Cree, Philips, OSRAM, etc.

 

[Jeff7]

Pretty impressive.
That circuit board looks like a 2 sided metal core board.
12W isn't too much to dissipate across that much surface area.
I would like to know the junction temperature those LEDs are running at.

Those LEDs are cheap Chinese imitation LEDs.
They don't have the same quality control as Cree, Philips, OSRAM, etc.

133 lm/W is quite high, and that's just for the emitters themselves, not factoring in power supply inefficiencies. They're even claiming 150 lm/W on one model. Looks like it's got a fairly lousy power factor though, just a bit below 0.6 while running at close to 220VAC. One frame shows 214.5V, 0.1A, 12.3W, PF=0.577.


I also typically see higher lm/W values on cool white colors, in the 5000K-6500K range; looks like these are 4000K, neutral white.
And of course, there's color rendering quality, measured by CRI. (0=monochromatic/utterly horrible. 100="perfect," a blackbody emitter, such as the Sun or an incandescent lightbulb.)
Typically, higher CRI comes at the cost of luminous efficacy. Warmer color temperatures also typically depress the efficacy.

Example: The Luxeon Rebel.
LXW9-PW27. 2700K, 90 CRI. 120lm typical.
LXW7-PW40. 4000K, 70 CRI. 180lm typical.
LXW8-PW40. 4000K, 80 CRI. 170lm typical.

Warm color temperature + good colors = lower lumens.
Cooler color temperature + lower-quality colors = more lumens.

Unfortunately, more lumens is usually what sells more lightbulbs. So you get people buying bright LED lights, but then getting turned off on LEDs because of lousy, blue-tinted light.


I'm also curious as to why some of the bulbs are painted black. White has a habit of being a tiny bit better than black at optimizing light output. :hmm:
Maybe that was just a quick test build.


But hey, if they've found a way to do this, using some extraordinarily-efficient LEDs, and can produce a good-quality product, great. I'd love to know what they're using for emitters and power supplies though. Cree's got some things that are pushing 200 lm/W, though some of those things they've got look like 1st-gen Luxeons from Philips.

The performance of the NanoLight is not affected by frequently turning on and off.

Good inrush limiting on the power supply? A lot of switching power supplies I've seen don't appreciate being turned on and off frequently.

 

[mugs]

Just spent $400 on LED bulbs for my newly finished basement.

But at 800 lumens (box says 75 watt equivalent) they're significantly brighter than the 65 watt bulbs the electrician put in. And my wife and I both work from home, so I think that each bulb averaging 8-10 hours of use per day is not unreasonable. At that usage level, they'll pay for themselves in about a year.

 

[lxskllr]

I'm also curious as to why some of the bulbs are painted black. White has a habit of being a tiny bit better than black at optimizing light output. :hmm:
Maybe that was just a quick test build.

I'm guessing it's for appearance in the OFF position. A black body could virtually disappear, and would look better in some fixtures.

 

[edro]

They did mentions some kind of special coating in the video.
It could be to improve radiation or a heat spreader, although aluminum is a damn good heat spreader to begin with.

 

[Imp]

That "super" bulb needs a diffuser. Otherwise, it's a bunch of super bright LEDs that will take your eyes out if you accidentially look into it - my 3D Maglite is 1 LED and does that.

 

[BladeVenom]

That "super" bulb needs a diffuser.

You mean a lamp shade.

 

[Jeff7]

I'm guessing it's for appearance in the OFF position. A black body could virtually disappear, and would look better in some fixtures.

Hm, yeah perhaps.

They did mentions some kind of special coating in the video.
It could be to improve radiation or a heat spreader, although aluminum is a damn good heat spreader to begin with.

It's still got to dissipate heat into the air...though if they're highly efficient LEDs, they'll be pushing a bit more of the energy input out as light, rather than converting it to heat.

Hopefully they're not doing a scammy thing - or hopefully it's not just some kind of measurement error.

 

[RossMAN]

Those LEDs are cheap Chinese imitation LEDs.
They don't have the same quality control as Cree, Philips, OSRAM, etc.

Yeah I'm also curious about the quality of their LEDs.

In the end I decided to pass on backing this project.

 

[Imp]

Just bought some LED bulbs last week. Got two Ikeas (25W and 40W) and the weird looking Philips 60W LED with the plastic lenses.

Impressed that they turn on right away, color is warm... Only major complaint is with the Philips bulb: holy shit this fuc*er gets hot. I thought the base was plastic, but turns out it's metal and a major heatsink (duh with all the grills). It took a good 10 minutes for it to cool to a touchable temp after taking it out a socket after having it on for about an hour.

Speaking of hot, the Philips burned/scorched the plastic base in the plastic lamp socket -- a small crisp but thin piece fell out when I took it out. Have to say that it's happaned before with CFLs, so kind of meh...

 

[Jeff7]

Just bought some LED bulbs last week. Got two Ikeas (25W and 40W) and the weird looking Philips 60W LED with the plastic lenses.

Impressed that they turn on right away, color is warm... Only major complaint is with the Philips bulb: holy shit this fuc*er gets hot. I thought the base was plastic, but turns out it's metal and a major heatsink (duh with all the grills). It took a good 10 minutes for it to cool to a touchable temp after taking it out a socket after having it on for about an hour.

Speaking of hot, the Philips burned/scorched the plastic base in the plastic lamp socket -- a small crisp but thin piece fell out when I took it out. Have to say that it's happaned before with CFLs, so kind of meh...

Well good - that means that their design is doing a good job of transferring heat away from the LEDs and power circuitry.
The only way to reduce the heat output then is with more efficient components - or else invent new components that can withstand much higher operating temperatures.