A flicker out of the corner of your eye
March 30, 2023 1:58 PM Subscribe
"There is a world, almost within reach, in which LED lighting could be aesthetically fabulous. But right now, it’s one more thing that overpromises and under-delivers. What we’re starting to glimpse is a new phase in which good light, once easy to achieve and available to everyone, becomes a luxury product or the province of technological obsessives."
I bought some of the cheapo color-tunable LEDs (Lepro, I think) off of Amazon a few months ago and swapped out most of my lighting in my apartment. They look so much better--I mean sometimes I like to do a mix of green and red and purple but mostly I set it to the "candle" color and it's awesome. I don't use a separate controller, they pair with a phone app and I can actually control the color and intensity from the Google Home app without having a Google Home, which is a lot simpler than the overly precise tuning in the app.
posted by derrinyet at 2:18 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by derrinyet at 2:18 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Yeah, based on the headline and first few paragraphs, I can only assume the author also has strong opinions about the woes of unleaded gasoline and Freon.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 2:20 PM on March 30, 2023 [20 favorites]
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 2:20 PM on March 30, 2023 [20 favorites]
The LED bulbs that change color temperature to be warmer as they dim are Philips Warm Glow bulbs. Well, they were, but the name appears to be discontinued and its not clear what the actual new feature is called. More in this 20-minute Technology Connections video full of lament. Also suggested: get the newish "filament" LED bulbs, which do a better job of dissipating heat than the opaque white bulbs.
posted by meowzilla at 2:22 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by meowzilla at 2:22 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
Point of the article is that a lot of manufacturers produce shitty LEDs that either fail too soon or end up with poor color balance. That, and the fact that the cheapest LEDs are usually blue, and thus deliver colder light.
Personally, I like the full daylight ultrabright LED canisters in our living room, but we do have a more sedate and much less bright LED in the bedroom, that tends more on the warm end of the spectrum. Bathroom though, the warmer tone LED there just isn't bright enough; I wish it cranked out a few more lumens.
I do not miss the yellow incandescent bulbs. Remember photos of the 1970s and early 80s, where everything is brown and yellow? Was the color the result of bad design, bad lighting, or everyone smoking? Who knows. Regardless, I don't wish to revisit that era.
posted by caution live frogs at 2:23 PM on March 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
Personally, I like the full daylight ultrabright LED canisters in our living room, but we do have a more sedate and much less bright LED in the bedroom, that tends more on the warm end of the spectrum. Bathroom though, the warmer tone LED there just isn't bright enough; I wish it cranked out a few more lumens.
I do not miss the yellow incandescent bulbs. Remember photos of the 1970s and early 80s, where everything is brown and yellow? Was the color the result of bad design, bad lighting, or everyone smoking? Who knows. Regardless, I don't wish to revisit that era.
posted by caution live frogs at 2:23 PM on March 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
Dimmers with LEDs are kind of a pain, we have to admit that. There are like 2-3 different standards, and most require the lightbulb to be matched to the type of dimmer, which is written in tiny print on the side or back of the device and box, but otherwise indistinguishable from each other. I'm sure the tech will improve in the future.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:24 PM on March 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:24 PM on March 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
(I mean, I did begin reading the article expecting a curmudgeonly rant about how much better things were in the Olden Days, but the discussion of museum lighting and how shoddy or poorly-tuned LEDs are giving grief, I can see as a legitimate concern rather than pointless complaint about progress)
posted by caution live frogs at 2:25 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by caution live frogs at 2:25 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
Most of the LED bulbs in my house fail in some way within a year or so. We have 8 GU10s in my kitchen, and half of them have gone to about 25% brightness. One or two are just pink. Another goes on and off at random times. One or two have even failed explosively, with the glass lens/cover shooting off and bouncing around the kitchen. These are all low-to-mid-priced LEDs from online bulb suppliers. The quality is shocking, which is the main point I took from the article, and which my own experience backs up. LED torches, on the other hand, are a game-changer.
posted by pipeski at 2:26 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by pipeski at 2:26 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
I’m generally a fan of LED bulbs and have watched them improve dramatically as they have become more common. I pay attention to color (perhaps not as much as an artist but more so than some people) and the color rendering hasn’t been an issue to me. I often use a mix of warm and cool LEDs in multi-bulb fixtures and it seems to help. On the other hand, the reliability has not been at all as promised. Some seem to last forever, whereas others seem to start flickering, turn on inconsistently, or not turn on at all after only a few months. So I definitely agree with the author in that regard. But then again, the longevity of incandescent bulbs was shorter than it should have been, and not by accident.
posted by TedW at 2:30 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by TedW at 2:30 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
No it isn’t. You can buy smart bulbs that you can set to any color you want for less than $8 a bulb
No. The entire point of this article is that you can't describe all the characteristics of a light source with one or two numbers that you can just set with a dial. Light and color are so much more complicated than that.
And wow, nothing makes me feel more like a gaslit crazy person than talking to people who can't see any difference between incandescent bulbs and LEDs. It's enough to make me wonder if I've been wrong about audiophiles all these years.
posted by straight at 2:30 PM on March 30, 2023 [60 favorites]
No. The entire point of this article is that you can't describe all the characteristics of a light source with one or two numbers that you can just set with a dial. Light and color are so much more complicated than that.
And wow, nothing makes me feel more like a gaslit crazy person than talking to people who can't see any difference between incandescent bulbs and LEDs. It's enough to make me wonder if I've been wrong about audiophiles all these years.
posted by straight at 2:30 PM on March 30, 2023 [60 favorites]
I still see people complaining that bright white LEDs have replaced the sickly hue of sodium vapor bulbs in streetlights. People are supposed to look like they're simultaneously dying of malnutrition and anemia on city streets at night! It's confusing my circadian cycle! It's interfering with my stargazing! It's made it too easy to distinguish vampires from ordinary humans!
I suppose those people are entitled to their opinions.
also, a hundred times yes on the LED dimmer thing. If you have LED lighting problems in your home, either you are buying extraordinarily shitty bulbs, or you have dimmer switches not designed for LED bulbs. Yes, even if you have your dimmer switch "all the way on", you'll still have problems.
posted by phooky at 2:30 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
I suppose those people are entitled to their opinions.
also, a hundred times yes on the LED dimmer thing. If you have LED lighting problems in your home, either you are buying extraordinarily shitty bulbs, or you have dimmer switches not designed for LED bulbs. Yes, even if you have your dimmer switch "all the way on", you'll still have problems.
posted by phooky at 2:30 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
There are certainly problems with low-end LEDs, but even mid-priced, low-CRI LED bulbs are wildly better than the often ghoulish CFLs that they replaced and which the article barely mentions. Those CFLs, the mainstream option for years, provided far worse light and color reproduction and horrific dimmer compatibility compared with virtually anything on the market today.
We immediately gutted the nightmarish CFLs from the house we bought three years ago - taking the time to very carefully dispose of them at the hazardous waste facility (!) - and have had a grand total of zero problems with any of the LEDs (mostly Philips "warm glow" dimmables or Hues) we installed, nor the handful of decent Cree LEDs that the previous owners already had in place that we didn't feel the need to replace. I haven't touched a lightbulb in years, thank heavens.
The article reads like something from before CFLs largely replaced incandescent lights in the aughts, and it's a weird read today for anyone who hasn't wanted to pay to light their house with incandescents. Sure, yes, the cheapest LEDs will fail early... just like the cheapest incandescents would suddenly pop and leave you stranded at the worst moments back in the day. I haven't cursed at a suddenly-failed bathroom bulb, something everyone of a certain age remembers, in almost two decades.
posted by eschatfische at 2:34 PM on March 30, 2023 [7 favorites]
We immediately gutted the nightmarish CFLs from the house we bought three years ago - taking the time to very carefully dispose of them at the hazardous waste facility (!) - and have had a grand total of zero problems with any of the LEDs (mostly Philips "warm glow" dimmables or Hues) we installed, nor the handful of decent Cree LEDs that the previous owners already had in place that we didn't feel the need to replace. I haven't touched a lightbulb in years, thank heavens.
The article reads like something from before CFLs largely replaced incandescent lights in the aughts, and it's a weird read today for anyone who hasn't wanted to pay to light their house with incandescents. Sure, yes, the cheapest LEDs will fail early... just like the cheapest incandescents would suddenly pop and leave you stranded at the worst moments back in the day. I haven't cursed at a suddenly-failed bathroom bulb, something everyone of a certain age remembers, in almost two decades.
posted by eschatfische at 2:34 PM on March 30, 2023 [7 favorites]
Working in a museum I know exactly what they're talking about wrt lighting, even track light units that cost 250-500 bucks each start to fail well within their posted lifespan, either losing intensity or changing color. It's a real problem for the industry.
The author is right about the malfunction/failure state/low quality led lights being a huge issue vs incandescents. They're better in many many ways but they're also much more complex and prone to confusing failure modes, like street lights turning purple as phosphors burn out.
posted by Ferreous at 2:36 PM on March 30, 2023 [10 favorites]
The author is right about the malfunction/failure state/low quality led lights being a huge issue vs incandescents. They're better in many many ways but they're also much more complex and prone to confusing failure modes, like street lights turning purple as phosphors burn out.
posted by Ferreous at 2:36 PM on March 30, 2023 [10 favorites]
As a rule of thumb, if the new alternative is genuinely worse, it’s going to hurt the cause—e.g., the low-flow toilet. I also remember when veggie burgers weren’t any good, which is long ago now but at the time made for a joke about the entire concept of not eating meat.
Anyway, this article has at least let me know why I look so bad under the elevator lights. Several times a day I have to stare in horror at the elevator mirrors as I go up.
posted by Countess Elena at 2:36 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
Anyway, this article has at least let me know why I look so bad under the elevator lights. Several times a day I have to stare in horror at the elevator mirrors as I go up.
posted by Countess Elena at 2:36 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
The people in my life who are able to notice the difference in the color of white light tend also to be the ones who are much better at art than I am, so I am inclined to believe them if there is some kind of differences imperceptible to me.
posted by Jon_Evil at 2:36 PM on March 30, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by Jon_Evil at 2:36 PM on March 30, 2023 [7 favorites]
I used to hate the harsh lighting of fluorescent tubes. I wanted to live in the incandescent and neon night of my grandparents. Big long fluorescents, or compact twists in a mazda socket, their light too harsh and the hazardous waste (because of the mercury); glad to see them go. Those little LEDs though, such pure colors, like a laser; and so efficient. Cool to the touch, with a nominal lifetime of decades. Then the blue LED was developed, and the world changed. As we know now, sometimes the yellow phosphor fails and white LEDs can go purple. All so colorful, as are 21st-century Christmas lights - I love it, although I realize there's a lot of haters out there.
posted by Rash at 2:38 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Rash at 2:38 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
I am going to make an absolute fucking fortune hawking cosmetics tuned to look good under LED lighting.
posted by phooky at 2:46 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by phooky at 2:46 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
LED bulbs are fine. I’ve been writing the date on every bulb when I install them since I started switching to CFLs in the late 90s. Early LED bulbs rarely lasted much more than a year, but now I hardly ever have to change them. I buy them at IKEA or whatever is on sale at Canadian Tire.
The colour of warm LEDs are fine. I only have three incandescents left in my house (not easily replaceable because of he fixtures) and I can’t tell the differed except for the heat off the bulb.
posted by fimbulvetr at 2:48 PM on March 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
The colour of warm LEDs are fine. I only have three incandescents left in my house (not easily replaceable because of he fixtures) and I can’t tell the differed except for the heat off the bulb.
posted by fimbulvetr at 2:48 PM on March 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
Ask anybody who does video game graphics: how things look depends not just on the light coming directly from the light source but also from all the ways that light is reflected by everything else in the room. So it's not just the color, not just the intensity, but the directions the light is emitted, how it is focused, the polarization of the light—all of these things are going change the way things look.
posted by straight at 2:54 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by straight at 2:54 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
And wow, nothing makes me feel more like a gaslit crazy person than talking to people who can't see any difference between incandescent bulbs and LEDs.
There are a bunch of different colors between LED bulbs for consumer sale, if I had to guess more than incandescent ever offered. So yes of course there are differences. I think it continues to blow people's mind that people like or prefer the old colors.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:56 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
I've replaced all of the incandescent and CFL bulbs in my house with decent-quality warm white LED bulbs, and personally I like the result better than the incandescents.
Tangentially related, I bought an old defunct vintage microphone on eBay for cheap, cleaned it up, yanked out all the innards, and replaced them with a small socket+cord and a color-changing LED bulb with its own (cute, teeny) remote. I love setting it on slow-change and watch the colors morph by...very soothing!
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:56 PM on March 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
Tangentially related, I bought an old defunct vintage microphone on eBay for cheap, cleaned it up, yanked out all the innards, and replaced them with a small socket+cord and a color-changing LED bulb with its own (cute, teeny) remote. I love setting it on slow-change and watch the colors morph by...very soothing!
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:56 PM on March 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
And wow, nothing makes me feel more like a gaslit crazy person than talking to people who can't see any difference between incandescent bulbs and LEDs.
I see a difference, sure. I just don't think that incandescents are necessarily better, even if they're what I was used to.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:57 PM on March 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
I see a difference, sure. I just don't think that incandescents are necessarily better, even if they're what I was used to.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:57 PM on March 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
I'm extremely, extremely picky about lighting quality in my house. I hate fluorescent bulbs with a passion, and until recently have never seen an LED that satisfied me for daily use. I still probably wouldn't use them for very color-picky filming/photography yet, but maybe soon.
Finally now, certain brands of LED bulbs truly are becoming *very* close to having the visual qualities of incandescent lights. For frosted bulbs, I've been 100% satisfied that my Philips Hue bulbs can at last be daily-driver sort of bulbs for my household for both cool white and warm white uses.
The Philips Hue have thus far been the only LEDs that I can't *immediately* upon walking in a room and pick out as LED bulbs. I'm optimistic about even closer realistic emulation of incandescents for most everyday uses.
I absolutely still use incandescent bulbs in a few specific circumstances (those where non-frosted bulbs or colored bulbs are the best for that specific fixture), but for the main room bulbs? LEDs have finally arrived.
posted by tclark at 2:58 PM on March 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
Finally now, certain brands of LED bulbs truly are becoming *very* close to having the visual qualities of incandescent lights. For frosted bulbs, I've been 100% satisfied that my Philips Hue bulbs can at last be daily-driver sort of bulbs for my household for both cool white and warm white uses.
The Philips Hue have thus far been the only LEDs that I can't *immediately* upon walking in a room and pick out as LED bulbs. I'm optimistic about even closer realistic emulation of incandescents for most everyday uses.
I absolutely still use incandescent bulbs in a few specific circumstances (those where non-frosted bulbs or colored bulbs are the best for that specific fixture), but for the main room bulbs? LEDs have finally arrived.
posted by tclark at 2:58 PM on March 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
As a side note I really really hate the trend of integrated led light fixtures. Just making a huge block of trash that has to be thrown away when the LEDs fail.
posted by Ferreous at 3:03 PM on March 30, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by Ferreous at 3:03 PM on March 30, 2023 [15 favorites]
I see a difference, sure. I just don't think that incandescents are necessarily better, even if they're what I was used to.
Well, sure you're welcome to prefer vanilla to chocolate, but when they take chocolate off the market, don't tell me to stop complaining because your brand of "dark vanilla" tastes the same.
posted by straight at 3:06 PM on March 30, 2023 [7 favorites]
Well, sure you're welcome to prefer vanilla to chocolate, but when they take chocolate off the market, don't tell me to stop complaining because your brand of "dark vanilla" tastes the same.
posted by straight at 3:06 PM on March 30, 2023 [7 favorites]
Unusually high number of RTFA posts in this young thread...
posted by fairmettle at 3:08 PM on March 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by fairmettle at 3:08 PM on March 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
I like black body radiation at about 4000K best when working, and 3000K when relaxing.
Nothing comes close to that except a black body radiator.
However, I'm willing to accept some non-perfect colour in exchange for my electric bill going down by about half to illuminate my home to an acceptable, non-cavelike, non-candlelit, level. Tradeoffs are something people without infinite resources have to do.
BTW you can mitigate some of the worst spectral spikes by mixing up the colour temperature and brands of your bulbs. Everyone's got a different phosphor blend. Most of our multi-bulb fixtures have both "warm" and "natural" white bulbs. Using an RGB bulb to mimic black body radiation is spectrally ... let's say inane. But if you're happy with it more power to you.
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:12 PM on March 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
Nothing comes close to that except a black body radiator.
However, I'm willing to accept some non-perfect colour in exchange for my electric bill going down by about half to illuminate my home to an acceptable, non-cavelike, non-candlelit, level. Tradeoffs are something people without infinite resources have to do.
BTW you can mitigate some of the worst spectral spikes by mixing up the colour temperature and brands of your bulbs. Everyone's got a different phosphor blend. Most of our multi-bulb fixtures have both "warm" and "natural" white bulbs. Using an RGB bulb to mimic black body radiation is spectrally ... let's say inane. But if you're happy with it more power to you.
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:12 PM on March 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
Some of these pro-LED comments read to me like "If you have a problem with how LEDs look compared to incandescents, it's probably because you're buying cheap bulbs and/or not properly pairing them with lamps equipped with specially calibrated dimmer switches. (Which, by the way, are also not cheap.)"
Which is not a very convincing argument when most of us grew up with incandescents that (often) look twice as good at half the price.
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:14 PM on March 30, 2023 [9 favorites]
Which is not a very convincing argument when most of us grew up with incandescents that (often) look twice as good at half the price.
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:14 PM on March 30, 2023 [9 favorites]
Unusually high number of RTFA posts in this young thread...
To be fair, it's a paywalled article.
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:15 PM on March 30, 2023
To be fair, it's a paywalled article.
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:15 PM on March 30, 2023
For some neat visualizations of how LEDs are sorta but not quite like other lights/sunlight, Flux has a lot of graphs showing what colors of light each kind of bulb generates.
Los Angeles, 10 AM Sunny
GE Incandescent
T12 Florescent (Gross)
Cree 2700K LED
High Pressure Sodium streetlights
Candle
posted by meowzilla at 3:16 PM on March 30, 2023 [9 favorites]
Los Angeles, 10 AM Sunny
GE Incandescent
T12 Florescent (Gross)
Cree 2700K LED
High Pressure Sodium streetlights
Candle
posted by meowzilla at 3:16 PM on March 30, 2023 [9 favorites]
mmm... I have some 60W stage fixtures with six different individually controllable LED emitters, RGB + amber + cool white + ultraviolet. It takes a lot of tweaking of levels but I can make a pretty dang convincing ray of sunlight with them, including the UV-triggered glow of optical brighteners. It's a fun exercise, but definitely not something I'd want running full time, with the excessive power draw and the cooling fans running constantly.
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:20 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:20 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
Working in a museum I know exactly what they're talking about wrt lighting, even track light units that cost 250-500 bucks each start to fail well within their posted lifespan, either losing intensity or changing color. It's a real problem for the industry.
Heh, this is exactly why I was so interested in the article. I’m tired of helping my preparator schlep the giant ladder.
posted by PussKillian at 3:23 PM on March 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
Heh, this is exactly why I was so interested in the article. I’m tired of helping my preparator schlep the giant ladder.
posted by PussKillian at 3:23 PM on March 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
My unimportant little hobby horse is that I hate how…cold most Christmas lights look now. Even the “warm” ones, but especially the rainbow ones. I’ve genuinely been considering investing three figures in Tru-Tone bulbs next year that promise to be much warmer and cozier.
posted by mosst at 3:27 PM on March 30, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by mosst at 3:27 PM on March 30, 2023 [15 favorites]
Sorry, is it paywalled? It wasn’t for me.
posted by PussKillian at 3:28 PM on March 30, 2023
posted by PussKillian at 3:28 PM on March 30, 2023
Oh another cool thing I made is a colour duplicator. I got these strings of smart RGB chips that hook into a microcontroller, and also a colour sensor. Point the colour sensor at an object or a light source and say "copy" and then it will change the RGB colours to an approximate match. Then you point the sensor at the RGB leds and say "perfect" and it will tweak the RGB values until they're a perfect match. One might be surprised at the different colours a cloudy sky can have...
... also put a string of RGB bulbs on the balcony with a custom microcontroller that (as much as an RGB bulb can) replicates the look of the old C7 slow blink Christmas lights, including the short fade on/off time and change of colour temperature while fading....
i may be a lighting dork.
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:28 PM on March 30, 2023 [16 favorites]
... also put a string of RGB bulbs on the balcony with a custom microcontroller that (as much as an RGB bulb can) replicates the look of the old C7 slow blink Christmas lights, including the short fade on/off time and change of colour temperature while fading....
i may be a lighting dork.
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:28 PM on March 30, 2023 [16 favorites]
From the article:
Seems like they're still living that life.
I always hated incandescents, and I just kicked the last fluorescent tubes out the house (Costco has twin T8 drop-in replacements for way cheap). I know all about colour temperature, but saving energy is worth more than any shits I can give about that.
Purple LED streetlights were a thing for a while, until the manufacturer did a recall.
posted by scruss at 3:33 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
For most of my life, I expected energy-saving lighting to be bad
Seems like they're still living that life.
I always hated incandescents, and I just kicked the last fluorescent tubes out the house (Costco has twin T8 drop-in replacements for way cheap). I know all about colour temperature, but saving energy is worth more than any shits I can give about that.
Purple LED streetlights were a thing for a while, until the manufacturer did a recall.
posted by scruss at 3:33 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
yeah I don't wanna go the rest of my life with every room everywhere lit up like a surgical theatre. so, cheaper, better bulbs now. please.
posted by j_curiouser at 3:37 PM on March 30, 2023
posted by j_curiouser at 3:37 PM on March 30, 2023
→
No, really?
I am alarmed at the dedication that the programmers of the PiDP-8/I mini DEC PDP-8 minicomputer emulator put into the code that blinks the front panel LEDs. The original PDP-8s used incandescent indicator bulbs, and the PiDP-8/I has the LEDs glowing softly and flickering as the register and address values change. Unfortunately, since it runs roughly 20× faster than the original, you can barely make sense of the glow, but they damn well put the work in so we're supposed to enjoy it ...
(grumbles and goes off to fix the front panel of his Altair)
posted by scruss at 3:39 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
i may be a lighting dork.
No, really?
I am alarmed at the dedication that the programmers of the PiDP-8/I mini DEC PDP-8 minicomputer emulator put into the code that blinks the front panel LEDs. The original PDP-8s used incandescent indicator bulbs, and the PiDP-8/I has the LEDs glowing softly and flickering as the register and address values change. Unfortunately, since it runs roughly 20× faster than the original, you can barely make sense of the glow, but they damn well put the work in so we're supposed to enjoy it ...
(grumbles and goes off to fix the front panel of his Altair)
posted by scruss at 3:39 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
I really wish folks would read the article instead of arguing with what they think it isays.
One detail that got my attention is that the CRI rating on bulbs isn't a very useful measure of how good the color quality actually is. CRI is defined by an average reflection from 8 spot colors that doesn't really capture the full spectrum. There's a broader set of color tests with 15 spot colors; the original 8 plus 7 more. The 9th one turns out to be important, a measure of performance on a deep red, which affects flesh tones and therefore how people look under the light. Interesting detail!
The site I've linked above (Waveform Lighting) sells what they claim to be very good bulbs; CRI 95+, flicker free. The downside is they're very expensive; $18 for a single A19 bulb, compare $3 or so for a regular one from Home Depot. I've ordered a few to try out.
posted by Nelson at 3:41 PM on March 30, 2023 [10 favorites]
One detail that got my attention is that the CRI rating on bulbs isn't a very useful measure of how good the color quality actually is. CRI is defined by an average reflection from 8 spot colors that doesn't really capture the full spectrum. There's a broader set of color tests with 15 spot colors; the original 8 plus 7 more. The 9th one turns out to be important, a measure of performance on a deep red, which affects flesh tones and therefore how people look under the light. Interesting detail!
The site I've linked above (Waveform Lighting) sells what they claim to be very good bulbs; CRI 95+, flicker free. The downside is they're very expensive; $18 for a single A19 bulb, compare $3 or so for a regular one from Home Depot. I've ordered a few to try out.
posted by Nelson at 3:41 PM on March 30, 2023 [10 favorites]
You can buy smart bulbs that you can set to any color you want for less than $8 a bulb. They work via an app on your phone or with Alexa or whatever smart speaker you have
...So, that's totally accessible to anyone who a) controls their own lighting (not true with some landlords); b) owns a modern-enough smartphone; and c) has a credit card or other means to download apps, oh and d) has time to fiddle with all this stuff.
posted by amtho at 3:46 PM on March 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
...So, that's totally accessible to anyone who a) controls their own lighting (not true with some landlords); b) owns a modern-enough smartphone; and c) has a credit card or other means to download apps, oh and d) has time to fiddle with all this stuff.
posted by amtho at 3:46 PM on March 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
If you’d told me 20 years ago that having bearable coloured electric light would mean having to assess the quality of diodes and being able to set a colour at Kelvin through a settings menu in a phone, that can’t be shared between the different people who use a room, I’d have been annoyed at you
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:47 PM on March 30, 2023 [17 favorites]
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:47 PM on March 30, 2023 [17 favorites]
I can't say I remember the incandescent era, but given this "What we’re starting to glimpse is a new phase in which good light, once easy to achieve and available to everyone, becomes a luxury product or the province of technological obsessives", isn't that just... the state of things these days?
Name a product category, that's been pretty much how it goes for as long as I can remember and I have my questions about the fidelity of people's memories of "The good ol' days". That's why The Wirecutter took off, originally. Sure, you've got options; but it's a race to the bottom where people understand price and maybe some other number that's taken as a proxy for quality. So things are as good a quality as they need to be to hit a price point and no more; but you can find better stuff if you know where to look. (But you have to do that work to know where to look)
I'm sure given time people of my generation will grumble about how unleaded chocolate just isn't the same (assuming chocolate's still around by then); much like my grandpa could reliably rant about how leaded gasoline was just *better* in every way that mattered.
But when it came time for me to start swapping out LED bulbs from the ones that the first owner of my house installed ~15 years ago, it was pretty easy to just head on down to Costco & pick from:
* Feit Electric 75W-replacement 90+ CRI 850 lumen, 9.4w, 50k hour/45y life, 2700k Soft White, dimmable, bulbless
* Feit Electric 60W replacement (CRI unlisted) 800 lumen, 8.8w, 15k hour/13y life, 2700k Soft White, dimmable
* Feit Electric 100W replacement 90+ CRI 1600 lumen, 17.5w, 15k hour/13y life, 3000k Bright White, dimmable
& each of these'd only cost me ~$1-2/year in power. (from what I gather, a lot of this is that fitting LEDs into an old-bulb style format is a bad idea because of the heat, so if you can avoid that the lifespan is fantastic)
Maybe I'm just a lighting plebeian, but it seems like I'm happier taking the easy route & I'll have to check back in on where things are at in 13-45 years. Who knows what lighting'll look like then.
posted by CrystalDave at 3:53 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
Name a product category, that's been pretty much how it goes for as long as I can remember and I have my questions about the fidelity of people's memories of "The good ol' days". That's why The Wirecutter took off, originally. Sure, you've got options; but it's a race to the bottom where people understand price and maybe some other number that's taken as a proxy for quality. So things are as good a quality as they need to be to hit a price point and no more; but you can find better stuff if you know where to look. (But you have to do that work to know where to look)
I'm sure given time people of my generation will grumble about how unleaded chocolate just isn't the same (assuming chocolate's still around by then); much like my grandpa could reliably rant about how leaded gasoline was just *better* in every way that mattered.
But when it came time for me to start swapping out LED bulbs from the ones that the first owner of my house installed ~15 years ago, it was pretty easy to just head on down to Costco & pick from:
* Feit Electric 75W-replacement 90+ CRI 850 lumen, 9.4w, 50k hour/45y life, 2700k Soft White, dimmable, bulbless
* Feit Electric 60W replacement (CRI unlisted) 800 lumen, 8.8w, 15k hour/13y life, 2700k Soft White, dimmable
* Feit Electric 100W replacement 90+ CRI 1600 lumen, 17.5w, 15k hour/13y life, 3000k Bright White, dimmable
& each of these'd only cost me ~$1-2/year in power. (from what I gather, a lot of this is that fitting LEDs into an old-bulb style format is a bad idea because of the heat, so if you can avoid that the lifespan is fantastic)
Maybe I'm just a lighting plebeian, but it seems like I'm happier taking the easy route & I'll have to check back in on where things are at in 13-45 years. Who knows what lighting'll look like then.
posted by CrystalDave at 3:53 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
>Up there, mounted behind the glass of a frosted laylight, were rows of LED spotlights forming bright blurry circles. They should have been uniform. Some were white; others were turning a sickly magenta or green...“The quality of the light,” she said, “is just not what we want it to be.”
Yeah this has been a thing since before LEDs. I can distinctly recall looking at the lights in ice arenas and seeing the lights that had turned pink or blue. And the bit about incandescents bulbs not flickering instead of burning out is just flat out wrong.
posted by ockmockbock at 4:11 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
Yeah this has been a thing since before LEDs. I can distinctly recall looking at the lights in ice arenas and seeing the lights that had turned pink or blue. And the bit about incandescents bulbs not flickering instead of burning out is just flat out wrong.
posted by ockmockbock at 4:11 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
Well, sure you're welcome to prefer vanilla to chocolate, but when they take chocolate off the market, don't tell me to stop complaining because your brand of "dark vanilla" tastes the same.
Complain away, amigo!
I just wonder if this (generally not specifically you) is like hfr movies, where I feel like I should like them better because they seem more real and true but they end up just feeling weird because I'm not used to them. Like, if we could grab some [ash] primitive screwheads [/ash] from before electric lights and show them different kinds of lights, I'm not at all sure that they'd pick 2700k incandscents as the best.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 4:17 PM on March 30, 2023
Complain away, amigo!
I just wonder if this (generally not specifically you) is like hfr movies, where I feel like I should like them better because they seem more real and true but they end up just feeling weird because I'm not used to them. Like, if we could grab some [ash] primitive screwheads [/ash] from before electric lights and show them different kinds of lights, I'm not at all sure that they'd pick 2700k incandscents as the best.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 4:17 PM on March 30, 2023
Thank you for posting this, the topic of LED lighting is one that I have been spending a lot of time investigating recently.
The author mentions that one of the major causes of the deterioration of the light quality is the degradation of the LEDs and other supporting electronics due to heat. LEDs and all the other electronics in that bulb use DC electricity, which means that the base of every LED bulb is a mini AC to DC converter, which is why if you remove an LED bulb it is still hot – and there are a whole lot of related topics and tangents that are wrapped up in this AC to DC conversion.
The biggest one is that we are trying to overlay one particular technology, DC powered lighting, onto an infrastructure that uses a different technology, AC electricity. The work around is the aforementioned mini AC to DC converters at the base of every lightbulb, which isn’t anywhere near an optimal solution at all. There is the heat damage to components that was mentioned, plus all the wasted energy at each one of these mini AC to DC converters. If you start looking around you, you will also start to see even more AC to DC conversion points (phone charger, laptop power bricks, TV power supplies, etc.). A staggeringly large amount of the electrical devices we use on a day to day basis are all DC powered, but yet, our electrical infrastructure is still AC, which is due to the energy distribution infrastructure. There is some movement to start developing DC electrical infrastructure for use inside structures, but it is still unfortunately, in its infancy. There is a company that offers a DC powered lighting system (ATX LED), but that system isn’t backwards compatible with the existing AC wiring that is currently in houses (different gauge wiring used for the DC system). So why is a DC powered lighting system important? It will solve the AC to DC conversion issues mentioned above because that conversion would be done at one spot that is physically removed from the LEDs, which will reduce the heat degradation of the components, and also save a bunch of energy that is currently being wasted as heat. Also, and this is a big one, a controller system can be integrated into the DC powered lighting system that can adjust the warmth of the light over the course of the day. At the start and end of the day the light will be warmer, and the light would be colder during the mid-day, reflecting the natural rhythm of our Sun, and this control won’t have to be done individual to the 50+ lightbulbs in the house, but through one system.
My wife and I are fortunate enough to be able to be building a house, one of the objectives we have with this build is to make it as energy efficient as possible (Passive House, solar, etc). We decided to go with the ATX LED DC lighting system for the energy savings and the control over the light characteristics. As a person with a career in tech this decision to use a DC powered lighting system started me down numerous rabbit holes about energy; how to have a DC electrical distribution system in a house, nano-grids, solar energy, wind energy, battery technologies, compressed air energy storage, and how to leverage tech to control all of these systems and have them fully integrated with each other. Hence why I mentioned that there are a number of different topics wrapped up in the AC to DC conversion issue, LED lightbulbs are some of the devices that are starting to put a focus on the inefficiencies of our energy systems.
I think that AC powered LED lighting will be a pass-thru technology. Eventually someone is going to figure out how to retrofit existing AC deployments to use a DC powered lighting system (as well as just general DC power distribution in a house, I am starting to view power adapters as an insult to my existence). I am not enough of an EE to do that, but I do think someone will sort it out. We can have the inside of a room be lit as if it were a clear sunny day, even when the sky would be a dark gray and it is dumping rain.
posted by Cu_wire at 4:19 PM on March 30, 2023 [17 favorites]
The author mentions that one of the major causes of the deterioration of the light quality is the degradation of the LEDs and other supporting electronics due to heat. LEDs and all the other electronics in that bulb use DC electricity, which means that the base of every LED bulb is a mini AC to DC converter, which is why if you remove an LED bulb it is still hot – and there are a whole lot of related topics and tangents that are wrapped up in this AC to DC conversion.
The biggest one is that we are trying to overlay one particular technology, DC powered lighting, onto an infrastructure that uses a different technology, AC electricity. The work around is the aforementioned mini AC to DC converters at the base of every lightbulb, which isn’t anywhere near an optimal solution at all. There is the heat damage to components that was mentioned, plus all the wasted energy at each one of these mini AC to DC converters. If you start looking around you, you will also start to see even more AC to DC conversion points (phone charger, laptop power bricks, TV power supplies, etc.). A staggeringly large amount of the electrical devices we use on a day to day basis are all DC powered, but yet, our electrical infrastructure is still AC, which is due to the energy distribution infrastructure. There is some movement to start developing DC electrical infrastructure for use inside structures, but it is still unfortunately, in its infancy. There is a company that offers a DC powered lighting system (ATX LED), but that system isn’t backwards compatible with the existing AC wiring that is currently in houses (different gauge wiring used for the DC system). So why is a DC powered lighting system important? It will solve the AC to DC conversion issues mentioned above because that conversion would be done at one spot that is physically removed from the LEDs, which will reduce the heat degradation of the components, and also save a bunch of energy that is currently being wasted as heat. Also, and this is a big one, a controller system can be integrated into the DC powered lighting system that can adjust the warmth of the light over the course of the day. At the start and end of the day the light will be warmer, and the light would be colder during the mid-day, reflecting the natural rhythm of our Sun, and this control won’t have to be done individual to the 50+ lightbulbs in the house, but through one system.
My wife and I are fortunate enough to be able to be building a house, one of the objectives we have with this build is to make it as energy efficient as possible (Passive House, solar, etc). We decided to go with the ATX LED DC lighting system for the energy savings and the control over the light characteristics. As a person with a career in tech this decision to use a DC powered lighting system started me down numerous rabbit holes about energy; how to have a DC electrical distribution system in a house, nano-grids, solar energy, wind energy, battery technologies, compressed air energy storage, and how to leverage tech to control all of these systems and have them fully integrated with each other. Hence why I mentioned that there are a number of different topics wrapped up in the AC to DC conversion issue, LED lightbulbs are some of the devices that are starting to put a focus on the inefficiencies of our energy systems.
I think that AC powered LED lighting will be a pass-thru technology. Eventually someone is going to figure out how to retrofit existing AC deployments to use a DC powered lighting system (as well as just general DC power distribution in a house, I am starting to view power adapters as an insult to my existence). I am not enough of an EE to do that, but I do think someone will sort it out. We can have the inside of a room be lit as if it were a clear sunny day, even when the sky would be a dark gray and it is dumping rain.
posted by Cu_wire at 4:19 PM on March 30, 2023 [17 favorites]
We are in a golden age of making everything fucking exhausting. Even lightbulbs.
posted by HotToddy at 4:24 PM on March 30, 2023 [32 favorites]
posted by HotToddy at 4:24 PM on March 30, 2023 [32 favorites]
It's not true that in the past wide-spectrum light was accessible to everyone for cheap. I grew up in India, where fluorescent tubelights were chosen for economy, despite being more expensive than incandescent lights, because electricity was expensive.
Interestingly this often led people who had grown up with it to prefer the white light of tubelights over the yellower light of incandescent bulbs even in situations where electricity was unmetered (college dorms). Tastes are subjective.
posted by splitpeasoup at 4:26 PM on March 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
Interestingly this often led people who had grown up with it to prefer the white light of tubelights over the yellower light of incandescent bulbs even in situations where electricity was unmetered (college dorms). Tastes are subjective.
posted by splitpeasoup at 4:26 PM on March 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
Complain away, amigo!
Because this is the internet I feel compelled to note that I mean this sincerely.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 4:28 PM on March 30, 2023
Because this is the internet I feel compelled to note that I mean this sincerely.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 4:28 PM on March 30, 2023
...So, that's totally accessible to anyone who a) controls their own lighting (not true with some landlords); b) owns a modern-enough smartphone; and c) has a credit card or other means to download apps, oh and d) has time to fiddle with all this stuff.
Yeah, there's no way that to turn on the lights in my own dang house, I have to:
- find my phone, unlock it, find the app, go through some number of menus and ads, and click a button to turn on the lights, which sometimes doesn't work for a variety of annoying technological reasons
- or install an always-spying on me speaker, that I have to speak to in very specific terms, and it gets wrong most of the time
- have every single "smart" light bulb now require power all day long, where some amount of time and power will be spent to download "firmware updates" that occasionally do the exact opposite of what I want them to do
- replace every single light bulb and hub whenever the lighting manufacturers decide that they want to migrate their "platform" into a new era or they forget to update their security certificates, go out of business, or whatever
Just to accomplish the same thing as the light switches that are already at the entrance of all my rooms that already turn the lights on and off very reliably.
posted by meowzilla at 4:59 PM on March 30, 2023 [14 favorites]
Yeah, there's no way that to turn on the lights in my own dang house, I have to:
- find my phone, unlock it, find the app, go through some number of menus and ads, and click a button to turn on the lights, which sometimes doesn't work for a variety of annoying technological reasons
- or install an always-spying on me speaker, that I have to speak to in very specific terms, and it gets wrong most of the time
- have every single "smart" light bulb now require power all day long, where some amount of time and power will be spent to download "firmware updates" that occasionally do the exact opposite of what I want them to do
- replace every single light bulb and hub whenever the lighting manufacturers decide that they want to migrate their "platform" into a new era or they forget to update their security certificates, go out of business, or whatever
Just to accomplish the same thing as the light switches that are already at the entrance of all my rooms that already turn the lights on and off very reliably.
posted by meowzilla at 4:59 PM on March 30, 2023 [14 favorites]
I love LED lights, with caveats, well, really just one caveat in two parts, and that's flicker. I like a festive house, so strings of LED lights are scattered about. Most strings run directly off the mains, so AC current. AC current spends (in the USA) half it's time at +60-ish volts, and the other half at -60-ish volts. This flips 60 times a second.
If you end up with cheap LED string lights (called Half-Wave), they simple discard the half that doesn't match the polarity of the LEDs, and you end up with a bulb that turns off-and 30 times a second. It doesn't matter to many folks, but some folks can see that flicker when the 'frame rate' gets that low. It gets really bad when you turn your head or move your eyes and you get a trail of strobing after images. Fix: make sure you buy Full Wave LED strings.
Most of the LED lighting in my house are strip-lights (those rolls you can buy from amazon). They run of DC voltages, and have no flicker.
Except.
The thing about LEDs is that they are pretty digital, they are either on full bright or they are off (some times they can glow at a dimmer state, but it's finicky). So, when you have LEDs on a dimmer (unless it's the kind of light that turns of sets of LEDs to dim the light), they are dimmed by Pulse Width Modulation (PWM). Which is basically turning them on and off quickly to reduce the overall amount of light, which can bring us back around to flicker. Fix: Have sets of string lights you can turn on and off individually? Live without dimming? Suck it up?
posted by chromecow at 5:06 PM on March 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
If you end up with cheap LED string lights (called Half-Wave), they simple discard the half that doesn't match the polarity of the LEDs, and you end up with a bulb that turns off-and 30 times a second. It doesn't matter to many folks, but some folks can see that flicker when the 'frame rate' gets that low. It gets really bad when you turn your head or move your eyes and you get a trail of strobing after images. Fix: make sure you buy Full Wave LED strings.
Most of the LED lighting in my house are strip-lights (those rolls you can buy from amazon). They run of DC voltages, and have no flicker.
Except.
The thing about LEDs is that they are pretty digital, they are either on full bright or they are off (some times they can glow at a dimmer state, but it's finicky). So, when you have LEDs on a dimmer (unless it's the kind of light that turns of sets of LEDs to dim the light), they are dimmed by Pulse Width Modulation (PWM). Which is basically turning them on and off quickly to reduce the overall amount of light, which can bring us back around to flicker. Fix: Have sets of string lights you can turn on and off individually? Live without dimming? Suck it up?
posted by chromecow at 5:06 PM on March 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
Does the amber nail polish trick improve the warmth of LED christmas lights?
posted by Callisto Prime at 5:19 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Callisto Prime at 5:19 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
As someone who's outfitted the house in commercial LED panels, that, yes, are blue, that's exactly the point, because Seasonal Affective Disorder is a completely different thing when the small living room has 13,000 lumens of relatively blue light.
And, yeah, if I want mood lighting, we have separate fixtures for that, and in the living room we use LED strips for that because you can make 'em whatever color you want, or run sequences on them, or what-have-you.
The one thing I'm super happy for is to be past the era of Compact Fluorescents, with their approximately 9 month half-life until you're wandering around wondering why you can't see anything in this room that has 4 "100 watt" bulbs turned up to full.
I think the big thing in my house, and I'm woodworker+handyperson enough that I don't have an issue wiring in different form-factor lights, is that I'm now thinking about lighting very differently. In fact, until we discovered the commercial LED panels, I was seriously thinking about putting in DMX512 controlled stage lighting, but now I just accept that we have different fixtures for different lighting situations, and that's fine.
And if my shadows get colors 'cause the light emitting bits aren't precisely co-positioned, well, yeah, whatever.
posted by straw at 5:42 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
And, yeah, if I want mood lighting, we have separate fixtures for that, and in the living room we use LED strips for that because you can make 'em whatever color you want, or run sequences on them, or what-have-you.
The one thing I'm super happy for is to be past the era of Compact Fluorescents, with their approximately 9 month half-life until you're wandering around wondering why you can't see anything in this room that has 4 "100 watt" bulbs turned up to full.
I think the big thing in my house, and I'm woodworker+handyperson enough that I don't have an issue wiring in different form-factor lights, is that I'm now thinking about lighting very differently. In fact, until we discovered the commercial LED panels, I was seriously thinking about putting in DMX512 controlled stage lighting, but now I just accept that we have different fixtures for different lighting situations, and that's fine.
And if my shadows get colors 'cause the light emitting bits aren't precisely co-positioned, well, yeah, whatever.
posted by straw at 5:42 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
→
The reason we (in North America) don't have DC power inside our houses is neither because of some ancient Edison-vs-Westinghouse snit, nor is it to do with any copper losses from low-voltage DC. It can be summed up in two letters: UL.
The organization formerly known as Underwriters Laboratories approves what you can attach to your domestic electrical system. This is done for safety, which from an insurance underwriter's point of view is pretty much “fewer things catching fire”. AC power is great at not catching fire: every AC arc has to quench and relight twice every cycle, so it's very much harder for an arc to become a heat source for fire in an AC system. DC, on the other hand, does not quench arcs. They keep going, getting hotter and hotter until something nearby reaches ignition temperature, and if there's an oxygen supply it'll start burning and keep burning. Remember the "My broken iBook cable set fire to my rug/couch/leg!" stories from the 2010s? DC arcs. Bad news.
So until recently, UL were not about DC wiring in the home because it represented an increased risk of loss to insurers. This kept rooftop solar off our houses for decades, as most solar module systems used to be DC. The only UL-approved DC wiring was for very low voltage, low current systems like doorbells. But things have changed with demands for high current car charging and other beefy DC requirements. It takes an entire industry to go up against UL and make them reconsider their established standards.
Innovation is good, but things not catching fire is better.
posted by scruss at 6:02 PM on March 30, 2023 [25 favorites]
There is some movement to start developing DC electrical infrastructure for use inside structures
The reason we (in North America) don't have DC power inside our houses is neither because of some ancient Edison-vs-Westinghouse snit, nor is it to do with any copper losses from low-voltage DC. It can be summed up in two letters: UL.
The organization formerly known as Underwriters Laboratories approves what you can attach to your domestic electrical system. This is done for safety, which from an insurance underwriter's point of view is pretty much “fewer things catching fire”. AC power is great at not catching fire: every AC arc has to quench and relight twice every cycle, so it's very much harder for an arc to become a heat source for fire in an AC system. DC, on the other hand, does not quench arcs. They keep going, getting hotter and hotter until something nearby reaches ignition temperature, and if there's an oxygen supply it'll start burning and keep burning. Remember the "My broken iBook cable set fire to my rug/couch/leg!" stories from the 2010s? DC arcs. Bad news.
So until recently, UL were not about DC wiring in the home because it represented an increased risk of loss to insurers. This kept rooftop solar off our houses for decades, as most solar module systems used to be DC. The only UL-approved DC wiring was for very low voltage, low current systems like doorbells. But things have changed with demands for high current car charging and other beefy DC requirements. It takes an entire industry to go up against UL and make them reconsider their established standards.
Innovation is good, but things not catching fire is better.
posted by scruss at 6:02 PM on March 30, 2023 [25 favorites]
There are certainly problems with low-end LEDs, but even mid-priced, low-CRI LED bulbs are wildly better than the often ghoulish CFLs that they replaced and which the article barely mentions. Those CFLs, the mainstream option for years, provided far worse light and color reproduction and horrific dimmer compatibility compared with virtually anything on the market today.
Every so often I end up staying in a motel where the only lights are all 40w CFLs. It's that horrible trifecta of too dim to see, horrible color, and flicker.
With our house, I've been swapping out all the old fixtures for LEDs, and maybe I'm a plebian but I find the fairly basic warm light LEDs perfectly acceptable. There are still a few halogen fixtures that I haven't replaced because I can't find an LED equivalent, but eventually those will be gone also.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:56 PM on March 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
Every so often I end up staying in a motel where the only lights are all 40w CFLs. It's that horrible trifecta of too dim to see, horrible color, and flicker.
With our house, I've been swapping out all the old fixtures for LEDs, and maybe I'm a plebian but I find the fairly basic warm light LEDs perfectly acceptable. There are still a few halogen fixtures that I haven't replaced because I can't find an LED equivalent, but eventually those will be gone also.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:56 PM on March 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
Over the last 8 years or so I've gradually replaced all of our CFL and incandescent bulbs with LED bulbs. I use Phillips mostly but have full spectrum daylight Cree bulbs in my hobby room/ham radio room. I have not had one fail or flicker. I love them.
posted by Grumpy old geek at 6:59 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Grumpy old geek at 6:59 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
they are dimmed by Pulse Width Modulation (PWM). Which is basically turning them on and off quickly to reduce the overall amount of light, which can bring us back around to flicker.
It can, but it doesn't.
As you said, 30Hz flicker is noticeable and 60Hz less so (in practice I notice 60Hz as well, but people differ). But a PWM runs much faster than this. They run in the kHz range because kHz flickers are imperceptible to mere mortals. And you can add a capacitor to smooth the output and reduce the flicker's magnitude, even if they were.
It is also possible to dim an LED by reducing the current and voltage changing them continuously, which has no flickering at all. This does actually work, PWMs are not a requirement; it's just that PWMs are very good at not wasting power.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 7:00 PM on March 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
It can, but it doesn't.
As you said, 30Hz flicker is noticeable and 60Hz less so (in practice I notice 60Hz as well, but people differ). But a PWM runs much faster than this. They run in the kHz range because kHz flickers are imperceptible to mere mortals. And you can add a capacitor to smooth the output and reduce the flicker's magnitude, even if they were.
It is also possible to dim an LED by reducing the current and voltage changing them continuously, which has no flickering at all. This does actually work, PWMs are not a requirement; it's just that PWMs are very good at not wasting power.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 7:00 PM on March 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
This is done for safety, which from an insurance underwriter's point of view is pretty much “fewer things catching fire”.
Thank you for this comment. I can't believe it's taken me this long to realize why it was called Underwriters Laboratories.
posted by Not A Thing at 7:00 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
Thank you for this comment. I can't believe it's taken me this long to realize why it was called Underwriters Laboratories.
posted by Not A Thing at 7:00 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hey, I'm just glad that Halogens are going out of fashion. I hated those hot things, they were dangerous.
posted by ovvl at 7:18 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by ovvl at 7:18 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
My unimportant little hobby horse is that I hate how…cold most Christmas lights look now. Even the “warm” ones, but especially the rainbow ones. I’ve genuinely been considering investing three figures in Tru-Tone bulbs next year that promise to be much warmer and cozier.
I did that this Christmas. It certainly was not cheap, but the old fashioned style incandescent tree lights I was replacing basically just started to fall to bits after a few years (plus had all the downsides of incandescent Christmas lights).
They're really nice. I bought them late in the before-Christmas season so they didn't have exactly what I wanted in stock but the light strings and sockets are burly and the led bulbs look and feel correct. I figure with energy savings and not having to replace cheap incandescent strings and bulbs they'll eventually pay themselves off.
posted by oneirodynia at 7:25 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
I did that this Christmas. It certainly was not cheap, but the old fashioned style incandescent tree lights I was replacing basically just started to fall to bits after a few years (plus had all the downsides of incandescent Christmas lights).
They're really nice. I bought them late in the before-Christmas season so they didn't have exactly what I wanted in stock but the light strings and sockets are burly and the led bulbs look and feel correct. I figure with energy savings and not having to replace cheap incandescent strings and bulbs they'll eventually pay themselves off.
posted by oneirodynia at 7:25 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
some folks can see that flicker when the 'frame rate' gets that low. It gets really bad when you turn your head or move your eyes and you get a trail of strobing after images. Fix: make sure you buy Full Wave LED strings.
I can see the flicker on some of them too :( Still not as bad as most fluorescent lighting though. I grew up in Hong Kong, in an era of sodium street lighting (which is objectively terrible, but I miss it dearly,) fluorescent tubes, and incandescents. I like the latter just fine, but wow were most fluorescents terrible - a ghastly blue, and the flicker. Maybe it's because I'm likely autistic, but I distinctly remember one block of classrooms at my secondary school where I just could not concentrate on anything, got awful headaches, and nobody around me would believe that there was a flicker, that I could see it, and that it was physically uncomfortable for me. Joy.
I have had to quit jobs for the same reason. Flickering lights in the warehouse, the office. Nobody else can even see it. Everyone thinks I'm making it up. It hurts me to be in that kind of lighting.
So far, I haven't run into the same problem with most LEDs, except for the cheaper programmable or dimmable ones, which often have a similarly dire flicker (though sometimes at a different frequency to the mains).
posted by Dysk at 7:37 PM on March 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
I can see the flicker on some of them too :( Still not as bad as most fluorescent lighting though. I grew up in Hong Kong, in an era of sodium street lighting (which is objectively terrible, but I miss it dearly,) fluorescent tubes, and incandescents. I like the latter just fine, but wow were most fluorescents terrible - a ghastly blue, and the flicker. Maybe it's because I'm likely autistic, but I distinctly remember one block of classrooms at my secondary school where I just could not concentrate on anything, got awful headaches, and nobody around me would believe that there was a flicker, that I could see it, and that it was physically uncomfortable for me. Joy.
I have had to quit jobs for the same reason. Flickering lights in the warehouse, the office. Nobody else can even see it. Everyone thinks I'm making it up. It hurts me to be in that kind of lighting.
So far, I haven't run into the same problem with most LEDs, except for the cheaper programmable or dimmable ones, which often have a similarly dire flicker (though sometimes at a different frequency to the mains).
posted by Dysk at 7:37 PM on March 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
I distinctly remember one block of classrooms at my secondary school where I just could not concentrate on anything, got awful headaches, and nobody around me would believe that there was a flicker, that I could see it, and that it was physically uncomfortable for me. Joy.
Back when CRT computer monitors were the usual thing, and I was fixing people's home computers for money, one of the first things I'd always do upon sitting down to fix one was bump the display refresh rate from the usual 60Hz up to at least 75Hz. If I didn't or couldn't do that, fixing stuff was way harder because of the distracting effects of the edges of my field of view pulsing and swimming the whole time.
Flat display panels don't rely on a flying spot that makes them flicker aggressively at the field refresh rate, and usually run their backlight power supplies well above any rate that could cause perceptible flicker over the whole screen, but they'll often use temporal dithering to cover up the limited number of brightness levels their subpixels are capable of. If you're looking at a web page and wondering why you're seeing moving swimming micro-checkered colour anomalies over parts of the background it's not you, it's what the display really is presenting to your eyeballs because some engineer somewhere can't see that.
posted by flabdablet at 11:23 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
Back when CRT computer monitors were the usual thing, and I was fixing people's home computers for money, one of the first things I'd always do upon sitting down to fix one was bump the display refresh rate from the usual 60Hz up to at least 75Hz. If I didn't or couldn't do that, fixing stuff was way harder because of the distracting effects of the edges of my field of view pulsing and swimming the whole time.
Flat display panels don't rely on a flying spot that makes them flicker aggressively at the field refresh rate, and usually run their backlight power supplies well above any rate that could cause perceptible flicker over the whole screen, but they'll often use temporal dithering to cover up the limited number of brightness levels their subpixels are capable of. If you're looking at a web page and wondering why you're seeing moving swimming micro-checkered colour anomalies over parts of the background it's not you, it's what the display really is presenting to your eyeballs because some engineer somewhere can't see that.
posted by flabdablet at 11:23 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
(Oh, and I forgot to mention what is literally the worst thing when it comes to being believed: fluorescents are - usually - fine when they're brand new. The flicker starts as they wear in, and gradually gets worse. "But you were fine just last week and nothing has changed" except how much the lighting flickers.)
posted by Dysk at 12:44 AM on March 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 12:44 AM on March 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
The flicker starts as they wear in, and gradually gets worse.
Indeed it does.
The coating on the cathodes that emit electrons into the tube's gas discharge space gradually evaporates, which makes those cathodes lose emissivity. As they lose emissivity their effective resistance increases.
In any series string of resistive elements, the element with the highest resistance dissipates the most power and therefore runs hottest. So because the cathodes in a fluorescent tube are in series, and because the rate at which the coating evaporates increases with temperature, any difference in the rates at which they wear will increase over time by positive feedback rather than balancing out.
An imbalance in cathode emissivity, in turn, makes the tube conduct harder on one phase of the AC mains supply than it does on the other. Which means that a flicker that started out as being almost entirely at 100Hz when the tube was new gradually acquires an increasing 50Hz component that's far more perceptible.
By the time both cathodes have worn out to the point where the tube can't maintain conduction without help from the starter, and starts doing the stereotypical failing-fluorescent flash-boink-flash-boink-flash-boink that's usually what it takes to prompt tube replacement, it will have been running at half power and flickering almost entirely at 50Hz for months.
posted by flabdablet at 2:04 AM on March 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
Indeed it does.
The coating on the cathodes that emit electrons into the tube's gas discharge space gradually evaporates, which makes those cathodes lose emissivity. As they lose emissivity their effective resistance increases.
In any series string of resistive elements, the element with the highest resistance dissipates the most power and therefore runs hottest. So because the cathodes in a fluorescent tube are in series, and because the rate at which the coating evaporates increases with temperature, any difference in the rates at which they wear will increase over time by positive feedback rather than balancing out.
An imbalance in cathode emissivity, in turn, makes the tube conduct harder on one phase of the AC mains supply than it does on the other. Which means that a flicker that started out as being almost entirely at 100Hz when the tube was new gradually acquires an increasing 50Hz component that's far more perceptible.
By the time both cathodes have worn out to the point where the tube can't maintain conduction without help from the starter, and starts doing the stereotypical failing-fluorescent flash-boink-flash-boink-flash-boink that's usually what it takes to prompt tube replacement, it will have been running at half power and flickering almost entirely at 50Hz for months.
posted by flabdablet at 2:04 AM on March 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
> i may be a lighting dork.
also re: pulse width modulation, The NEW Kind of LED You Should Know About! (individually addressable LEDs ;)
posted by kliuless at 2:33 AM on March 31, 2023
also re: pulse width modulation, The NEW Kind of LED You Should Know About! (individually addressable LEDs ;)
posted by kliuless at 2:33 AM on March 31, 2023
If anyone's having trouble accessing the article and would like to read it, here's an ungated version.
posted by virago at 4:16 AM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by virago at 4:16 AM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
I read the article with a twelve foot ladder. This is an industry of my experience. The fancy lamps that is.
UL. That's a company that started off with good intentions but now uses their name recognition and near monopoly to extort money. Perfect example of something that should be nationalized.
Most led bulbs kind of suck because you're trying to fit a whole power conversion setup into an incandescent lightbulb shape. It's quite impressive how good they are/can be within that limitation.
Most high end stuff is DC with an LED driver as the power supply handling the power conversion and dimming circuitry either remotely or in a different part of the fixture. By removing this circuitry from where the light is emitted, you can better manage thermals at the LED placement (for longevity), as well as have more room for circuitry that does better with dimming, etc...
Since DC doesn't alternate, you also don't usually have flicker, unless the circuitry uses PWM and introduces it. Even so, most LED chips fade for a fraction of a second after power is cut, and if your pulse is faster than that fade, you'll have what appears to be very smooth dimmed light.
On the glass note, don't worry, that's just sales speak. There is no secret recipe held by an old glassblower in Brooklyn. It's just good quality cased opal glass.
The comments about how something used to be nice and available to everyone inexpensively and in an uncomplicated fashion aren't wrong. I hope the industry improves but for now I try to help out friends and family by giving them simple advice on what bulbs to get. Philips. It's Philips. Or Soraa if you're a museum/gallery/art studio.
It's kind of amazing how nice of light you can hack together if you know how this stuff works, but that doesn't make up for the crummy light being forced on many others.
posted by jellywerker at 5:43 AM on March 31, 2023 [7 favorites]
UL. That's a company that started off with good intentions but now uses their name recognition and near monopoly to extort money. Perfect example of something that should be nationalized.
Most led bulbs kind of suck because you're trying to fit a whole power conversion setup into an incandescent lightbulb shape. It's quite impressive how good they are/can be within that limitation.
Most high end stuff is DC with an LED driver as the power supply handling the power conversion and dimming circuitry either remotely or in a different part of the fixture. By removing this circuitry from where the light is emitted, you can better manage thermals at the LED placement (for longevity), as well as have more room for circuitry that does better with dimming, etc...
Since DC doesn't alternate, you also don't usually have flicker, unless the circuitry uses PWM and introduces it. Even so, most LED chips fade for a fraction of a second after power is cut, and if your pulse is faster than that fade, you'll have what appears to be very smooth dimmed light.
On the glass note, don't worry, that's just sales speak. There is no secret recipe held by an old glassblower in Brooklyn. It's just good quality cased opal glass.
The comments about how something used to be nice and available to everyone inexpensively and in an uncomplicated fashion aren't wrong. I hope the industry improves but for now I try to help out friends and family by giving them simple advice on what bulbs to get. Philips. It's Philips. Or Soraa if you're a museum/gallery/art studio.
It's kind of amazing how nice of light you can hack together if you know how this stuff works, but that doesn't make up for the crummy light being forced on many others.
posted by jellywerker at 5:43 AM on March 31, 2023 [7 favorites]
fluorescents are - usually - fine when they're brand new. The flicker starts as they wear in, and gradually gets worse.
That's only a problem for pretty old school magnetic ballasts. A modern electronic ballast has a much higher frequency. They also use both filiments at the same time.
posted by Mitheral at 6:41 AM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
That's only a problem for pretty old school magnetic ballasts. A modern electronic ballast has a much higher frequency. They also use both filiments at the same time.
posted by Mitheral at 6:41 AM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
It should be noted that companies have been doing things to raise the cost and shorten the life of lightbulbs since the days of the Phœbus cartel in the 1920s. No, Pynchon didn't make them up — they were real.
So modern bulbs aren't as good in the 2020s as the ones your great(-great)-grandparents in the 1920s thought weren't as good as they used to be. They'd probably miss the lovely soft-focus effect that everyone being a smoker would bring to a place, too.
posted by scruss at 7:23 AM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
So modern bulbs aren't as good in the 2020s as the ones your great(-great)-grandparents in the 1920s thought weren't as good as they used to be. They'd probably miss the lovely soft-focus effect that everyone being a smoker would bring to a place, too.
posted by scruss at 7:23 AM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
Just to accomplish the same thing as the light switches that are already at the entrance of all my rooms that already turn the lights on and off very reliably
This confused me -- I use "smart" bulbs in a couple of places (mainly because I can set them on very arcane timing sequences that vary by season), but the wall switches still control them reliably (I mean, flick on/off still works).
What brand of bulb have you used, because I would very much like to avoid it?
posted by aramaic at 7:26 AM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
This confused me -- I use "smart" bulbs in a couple of places (mainly because I can set them on very arcane timing sequences that vary by season), but the wall switches still control them reliably (I mean, flick on/off still works).
What brand of bulb have you used, because I would very much like to avoid it?
posted by aramaic at 7:26 AM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
But for most smart bulbs, using the regular switch interferes with operation- they’re not going to be able to turn on when their circuit is switched to off. Installing anything where I have to explain to guests how the light switches work is a non starter for me.
posted by zamboni at 7:54 AM on March 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by zamboni at 7:54 AM on March 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
I was cat-watching for a friend with this problem. I walked in, it was fucking dark, I flipped switches, nothing happened. Looked around for floor lamps, twisted the knobs, nothing. I was really disgusted when I said "hey google turn on the lights" and it did so. Not just corporate spy bullshit in their house but inaccessible smart lighting too. I mean these are perfectly able people in a 650 sq foot condo and they're so wrapped up in technology they can't use a frigging switch.
I love these people, though. They're just nuts.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:29 AM on March 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
I love these people, though. They're just nuts.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:29 AM on March 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
I just stocked up on incandescent Christmas-tree lights this year, assuming they won't be available much longer. LED light is just not right for my personal Christmas-tree aesthetic.
posted by praemunire at 8:29 AM on March 31, 2023
posted by praemunire at 8:29 AM on March 31, 2023
I hate how…cold most Christmas lights look now.
Yes! That caught me out this year. I hadn't realised it was even possible for multicoloured lights to look cold. I might try the amber nail polish trick on the reds and yellows.
My house, dating from around the turn of the millennium, was fitted out entirely with MR16 halogen ceiling spots. Most are on dimmer switches. I tried replacing one of the exceptions with an LED equivalent, then hastily put the original bulb back; the flickering was startlingly severe.
So now I've given up on replacing the bulbs as they burn out, and switched to floor-standing LED lamps instead. I honestly expected the article to be about how difficult it is to find a floor or table lamp that's just... a lamp: reasonably attractive, mains-powered, with two states (on and off), and no requirement that you set it up on the wifi or memorise a sequence of button pushes or sing to it or cajole it or anoint it with morning dew gathered on the solstice. Just a lamp. With an on/off switch. And a three-pin plug.
Anyway, I managed to find some I can live with, although when the bulbs burn out they can't be replaced, and they are colder in colour than I'd prefer. Still, they illuminate the room as well as the halogens did, and they're good for reading by; and they're so much better than CFLs, there's no comparison. The only serious issue I have with them is that if I'm talking to a friend on FaceTime on my iPhone or iPad, the background seems to strobe, which is a bit distracting (presumably for both of us, but certainly for me).
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 8:52 AM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
Yes! That caught me out this year. I hadn't realised it was even possible for multicoloured lights to look cold. I might try the amber nail polish trick on the reds and yellows.
My house, dating from around the turn of the millennium, was fitted out entirely with MR16 halogen ceiling spots. Most are on dimmer switches. I tried replacing one of the exceptions with an LED equivalent, then hastily put the original bulb back; the flickering was startlingly severe.
So now I've given up on replacing the bulbs as they burn out, and switched to floor-standing LED lamps instead. I honestly expected the article to be about how difficult it is to find a floor or table lamp that's just... a lamp: reasonably attractive, mains-powered, with two states (on and off), and no requirement that you set it up on the wifi or memorise a sequence of button pushes or sing to it or cajole it or anoint it with morning dew gathered on the solstice. Just a lamp. With an on/off switch. And a three-pin plug.
Anyway, I managed to find some I can live with, although when the bulbs burn out they can't be replaced, and they are colder in colour than I'd prefer. Still, they illuminate the room as well as the halogens did, and they're good for reading by; and they're so much better than CFLs, there's no comparison. The only serious issue I have with them is that if I'm talking to a friend on FaceTime on my iPhone or iPad, the background seems to strobe, which is a bit distracting (presumably for both of us, but certainly for me).
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 8:52 AM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
We have LED bulbs throughout our house, and they’re all “good” for our purposes, but we’ve arrived at this state through basically a Darwinian struggle of trying bulbs and then replacing the ones that looked shitty, or in some cases waiting a couple of months and replacing the ones that started getting dim or acting odd. We have probably 1.5 rejected bulbs in a closet for every one in use. Couldn’t tell you what the specifications or brands of the good vs. the bad ones are.
Doesn’t feel like a great process! But as CrystalDave alluded to, this is not unique to this domain.
posted by staggernation at 9:01 AM on March 31, 2023
Doesn’t feel like a great process! But as CrystalDave alluded to, this is not unique to this domain.
posted by staggernation at 9:01 AM on March 31, 2023
At our house we had a door to door guy come around and offer to swap all our existing CFL bulbs with LED ones for free, under the auspices of a Victorian Government energy saving program that gave companies a handout for doing that. They also took away all the old CFLs for recycling.
That was three years ago. All of those bulbs are still in service, and a simple prism test shows that the light they put out is way less spectrally peaky than the CFLs they replaced. Most of our interior colours now look a lot more like they did before I replaced all our incandescent bulbs with CFLs. Some colours still pop slightly weird but we're used to that now.
I was a big fan of CFLs after working out just how many dollars each one would save me over its service life compared to the equivalent half dozen incandescents, and I like our LED bulbs even more.
I have no desire whatsoever to build anything touted as "smart" into our house's infrastructure; hell, we don't even have dimmers. We get by just fine with one ceiling mounted bulb per room for the most part, augmented with floor-standing reading lamps near the beds and comfy chairs.
The interior lighting we have is plenty good enough, certainly at least as good as it was while we still ran incandescents, and using it costs only a tenth of what it used to. It seems to me that if good lighting is indeed becoming a luxury product or the province of technological obsessives, that says more about the advertising industry's ongoing success at redefining minor conveniences as absolute necessities than it does about the general availability of perfectly adequate lighting.
Absolutely on the same page as seanmpuckett on the complete lunacy of not only allowing an always-on corporate surveillance bot to disable the light switches but paying the corporation for the privilege. The only legitimate reason for doing that, in my opinion, would be as a workaround for severe physical impairment.
posted by flabdablet at 10:16 AM on March 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
That was three years ago. All of those bulbs are still in service, and a simple prism test shows that the light they put out is way less spectrally peaky than the CFLs they replaced. Most of our interior colours now look a lot more like they did before I replaced all our incandescent bulbs with CFLs. Some colours still pop slightly weird but we're used to that now.
I was a big fan of CFLs after working out just how many dollars each one would save me over its service life compared to the equivalent half dozen incandescents, and I like our LED bulbs even more.
I have no desire whatsoever to build anything touted as "smart" into our house's infrastructure; hell, we don't even have dimmers. We get by just fine with one ceiling mounted bulb per room for the most part, augmented with floor-standing reading lamps near the beds and comfy chairs.
The interior lighting we have is plenty good enough, certainly at least as good as it was while we still ran incandescents, and using it costs only a tenth of what it used to. It seems to me that if good lighting is indeed becoming a luxury product or the province of technological obsessives, that says more about the advertising industry's ongoing success at redefining minor conveniences as absolute necessities than it does about the general availability of perfectly adequate lighting.
Absolutely on the same page as seanmpuckett on the complete lunacy of not only allowing an always-on corporate surveillance bot to disable the light switches but paying the corporation for the privilege. The only legitimate reason for doing that, in my opinion, would be as a workaround for severe physical impairment.
posted by flabdablet at 10:16 AM on March 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
That's only a problem for pretty old school magnetic ballasts. A modern electronic ballast has a much higher frequency. They also use both filiments at the same time.
My last workplace was a new build. The lights there had it within months.
posted by Dysk at 10:23 AM on March 31, 2023
My last workplace was a new build. The lights there had it within months.
posted by Dysk at 10:23 AM on March 31, 2023
The comment above about a simple prism test makes me wonder; are there any < $100 spectrometers that are good enough to get a vague idea of an LED bulb's light output? There's this $36 diffraction grate thing designed for school experiments but that would rely on your eye determining how bright the various frequencies are. Maybe there's a cheap way to hook that to a light sensor?
posted by Nelson at 10:29 AM on March 31, 2023
posted by Nelson at 10:29 AM on March 31, 2023
My last workplace was a new build. The lights there had it within months.
Magnetic ballasts might well be old school, but they're also really cheap. I don't think I've ever actually encountered a large scale Australian commercial fluorescent lighting installation that uses the electronic kind.
The quick tell, if you want to find out what's in a fitting near you, is that fittings with magnetic ballasts need a tube starter to get the tubes going, so there will be at least a second of delay between flicking on the switch and the room lighting up. The starter and ballast between them will also typically make a "boink" noise as the light first comes on. Electronic ballasts fire the tubes up much faster and don't make noises.
There exist LED lamps in fluorescent tube form factors that are designed as retrofits for magnetic ballast fittings. They come with a replacement for the fitting's tube starter that's essentially just a fuse. They cost more than the fluoro tube they're designed to replace, but they last a lot longer and only use a quarter of the power for the same brightness, so over their typical service life their total cost of ownership is well under half that of an equivalent fluoro. And they incorporate the same kind of power conversion electronics as any other mains-run LED lamp does so they don't suffer from creeping flicker like a fluoro does either. And their spectrum is nicer.
are there any < $100 spectrometers that are good enough to get a vague idea of an LED bulb's light output?
With a little practice you can actually get a surprisingly good idea of how peaky the local lighting spectrum is just by looking at the rainbow diffraction patterns off the playing side of a CD. Peaky sources like fluorescent tubes will make quite sharp colour fringes; better-spread spectrums yield much blurrier rainbows.
posted by flabdablet at 10:56 AM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
Magnetic ballasts might well be old school, but they're also really cheap. I don't think I've ever actually encountered a large scale Australian commercial fluorescent lighting installation that uses the electronic kind.
The quick tell, if you want to find out what's in a fitting near you, is that fittings with magnetic ballasts need a tube starter to get the tubes going, so there will be at least a second of delay between flicking on the switch and the room lighting up. The starter and ballast between them will also typically make a "boink" noise as the light first comes on. Electronic ballasts fire the tubes up much faster and don't make noises.
There exist LED lamps in fluorescent tube form factors that are designed as retrofits for magnetic ballast fittings. They come with a replacement for the fitting's tube starter that's essentially just a fuse. They cost more than the fluoro tube they're designed to replace, but they last a lot longer and only use a quarter of the power for the same brightness, so over their typical service life their total cost of ownership is well under half that of an equivalent fluoro. And they incorporate the same kind of power conversion electronics as any other mains-run LED lamp does so they don't suffer from creeping flicker like a fluoro does either. And their spectrum is nicer.
are there any < $100 spectrometers that are good enough to get a vague idea of an LED bulb's light output?
With a little practice you can actually get a surprisingly good idea of how peaky the local lighting spectrum is just by looking at the rainbow diffraction patterns off the playing side of a CD. Peaky sources like fluorescent tubes will make quite sharp colour fringes; better-spread spectrums yield much blurrier rainbows.
posted by flabdablet at 10:56 AM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
If you end up with cheap LED string lights (called Half-Wave), they simple discard the half that doesn't match the polarity of the LEDs, and you end up with a bulb that turns off-and 30 times a second. It doesn't matter to many folks, but some folks can see that flicker when the 'frame rate' gets that low. It gets really bad when you turn your head or move your eyes and you get a trail of strobing after images. Fix: make sure you buy Full Wave LED strings.
We have these by some of our windows and whenever I look at them I notice them pulsing or growing and feel like I should get my eyes checked. At least now I know why this is happening. And it's well past Christmas now so we may as well take those lights down.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:07 PM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
We have these by some of our windows and whenever I look at them I notice them pulsing or growing and feel like I should get my eyes checked. At least now I know why this is happening. And it's well past Christmas now so we may as well take those lights down.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:07 PM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
they simple discard the half that doesn't match the polarity of the LEDs, and you end up with a bulb that turns off-and 30 times a second
With 60Hz mains, a lamp that lights during only half the waveform will flicker at 60Hz. If it lights during both halves it will flicker at 120Hz.
30Hz flicker would be unacceptably perceptible to just about everybody.
posted by flabdablet at 12:22 PM on March 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
With 60Hz mains, a lamp that lights during only half the waveform will flicker at 60Hz. If it lights during both halves it will flicker at 120Hz.
30Hz flicker would be unacceptably perceptible to just about everybody.
posted by flabdablet at 12:22 PM on March 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
I hate how…cold most Christmas lights look now.
Omg, yes. My neighbor's house looks like a 7-11. I stocked up on incandescent Christmas lights this year too.
I live in a historic neighborhood that used to be so romantic at night with the amber street lights filtering through the maples. Then we got the fancy new street lights and the place looks like a fucking prison yard now. Also it does something weird when it's snowing where each snowflake casts a stark shadow. The effect is disorienting and the opposite of beautiful. It makes me want to cry.
Also, as a result of the switchover, I had to get blackout curtains because the new lights make it basically daylight in my bedroom. There was a last day that I woke naturally with the sun, and that day was years ago now.
posted by HotToddy at 1:11 PM on March 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
Omg, yes. My neighbor's house looks like a 7-11. I stocked up on incandescent Christmas lights this year too.
I live in a historic neighborhood that used to be so romantic at night with the amber street lights filtering through the maples. Then we got the fancy new street lights and the place looks like a fucking prison yard now. Also it does something weird when it's snowing where each snowflake casts a stark shadow. The effect is disorienting and the opposite of beautiful. It makes me want to cry.
Also, as a result of the switchover, I had to get blackout curtains because the new lights make it basically daylight in my bedroom. There was a last day that I woke naturally with the sun, and that day was years ago now.
posted by HotToddy at 1:11 PM on March 31, 2023 [4 favorites]
AC current spends (in the USA) half it's time at +60-ish volts, and the other half at -60-ish volts. This flips 60 times a second.
Not quite.
If you were to plot instantaneous voltage versus time for 120V, 60Hz mains AC as used in the USA, what you'd see would be a sinusoidal wave with symmetric humps peaking at 170V above and below zero volts, with a full-cycle repetition rate of 60 per second. So there are two half-cycles per 1/60th of a second, one positive-going and the other negative-going, which is why a lamp that uses both halves will flicker at 120Hz if it's going to flicker at all.
So if the peaks are at +170V and -170V, why is the mains spoken of as being 120V?
120V is an RMS (root mean square) figure. To calculate the RMS equivalent of a cyclically varying quantity you square the instantaneous value, find the arithmetic mean (i.e. the ordinary average) of the result over a complete cycle, then calculate the square root of that.
For a sinusoid that varies symmetrically either side of zero, the RMS value always comes out to the positive peak value divided by the square root of two. For a steady, unvarying value like a DC voltage or current, the RMS value is the same as the steady value.
The reason RMS values are generally quoted when talking about AC mains supplies is that the RMS voltage and current of an AC power supply are the same as those of the DC power supply that would cause the same power dissipation when applied to the same load resistance. This makes Ohm's Law (voltage drop equals resistance times current) and power calculation (watts equals volts times amps) work properly for simple resistive loads like stoves and water heaters and incandescent light bulbs.
But if you're designing circuitry and trying to work out how much space to leave around an AC mains conductor to avoid any risk of flashover to other circuitry nearby, or you're trying to work out how many LED chips you can drive in a long series string with just a simple resistor for current limiting in your cheap and super-flickery half-wave Christmas lights design, it's the peak voltage you need to be concerned with.
posted by flabdablet at 1:11 PM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
Not quite.
If you were to plot instantaneous voltage versus time for 120V, 60Hz mains AC as used in the USA, what you'd see would be a sinusoidal wave with symmetric humps peaking at 170V above and below zero volts, with a full-cycle repetition rate of 60 per second. So there are two half-cycles per 1/60th of a second, one positive-going and the other negative-going, which is why a lamp that uses both halves will flicker at 120Hz if it's going to flicker at all.
So if the peaks are at +170V and -170V, why is the mains spoken of as being 120V?
120V is an RMS (root mean square) figure. To calculate the RMS equivalent of a cyclically varying quantity you square the instantaneous value, find the arithmetic mean (i.e. the ordinary average) of the result over a complete cycle, then calculate the square root of that.
For a sinusoid that varies symmetrically either side of zero, the RMS value always comes out to the positive peak value divided by the square root of two. For a steady, unvarying value like a DC voltage or current, the RMS value is the same as the steady value.
The reason RMS values are generally quoted when talking about AC mains supplies is that the RMS voltage and current of an AC power supply are the same as those of the DC power supply that would cause the same power dissipation when applied to the same load resistance. This makes Ohm's Law (voltage drop equals resistance times current) and power calculation (watts equals volts times amps) work properly for simple resistive loads like stoves and water heaters and incandescent light bulbs.
But if you're designing circuitry and trying to work out how much space to leave around an AC mains conductor to avoid any risk of flashover to other circuitry nearby, or you're trying to work out how many LED chips you can drive in a long series string with just a simple resistor for current limiting in your cheap and super-flickery half-wave Christmas lights design, it's the peak voltage you need to be concerned with.
posted by flabdablet at 1:11 PM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
this universe is unnecessarily complicated and i demand a better, simpler one with more cheeseburgers
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:40 PM on March 31, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:40 PM on March 31, 2023 [10 favorites]
Some folks on this thread might find the following item interesting -- I've seen a couple previews of it where the reviewer pretty much swoons right off the bat:
Redgrass R9
...I have no affiliation, interest, or connection at all, it's just that the CRI caught my eye (sorry).
posted by aramaic at 7:11 PM on April 1, 2023
Redgrass R9
...I have no affiliation, interest, or connection at all, it's just that the CRI caught my eye (sorry).
posted by aramaic at 7:11 PM on April 1, 2023
My understating is that the brightness of new streetlights is largely because of myths about the effectiveness of these lights at preventing crime and improving public safety. Instead of buying lights that match the previous gentle amber glow we now get the harsh lamps that are supposed to make it easier to spot criminals who might lurk in the shadows.
posted by interogative mood at 9:07 PM on April 1, 2023
posted by interogative mood at 9:07 PM on April 1, 2023
They do make it easier to see everything, not just criminals in the shadows, including things like traffic, bicycles, pedestrians...
posted by Dysk at 9:25 PM on April 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Dysk at 9:25 PM on April 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
Instead of buying lights that match the previous gentle amber glow we now get the harsh lamps that are supposed to make it easier to spot criminals who might lurk in the shadows.
My neighborhood is the kind where the kids just leave their bikes wherever they happen to be when the kid hops off, and they don’t get stolen. I’ve driven off for the weekend many a time with my malfunctioning garage door wide open and nobody has ever taken anything. So the light thing is infuriatingly stupid.
posted by HotToddy at 9:27 PM on April 1, 2023
My neighborhood is the kind where the kids just leave their bikes wherever they happen to be when the kid hops off, and they don’t get stolen. I’ve driven off for the weekend many a time with my malfunctioning garage door wide open and nobody has ever taken anything. So the light thing is infuriatingly stupid.
posted by HotToddy at 9:27 PM on April 1, 2023
Every LED that replaces an incandescent reduces that baseline [heat] waste by as much as 90 percent.
This is a solution looking for a problem most of the year in most of the US.
posted by aniola at 9:49 AM on April 2, 2023
This is a solution looking for a problem most of the year in most of the US.
posted by aniola at 9:49 AM on April 2, 2023
Even if you're heating the home, you could save 65-80% of the electricity with a heat pump depending on the machine and climate.
And I don't agree. Even in Toronto winter, for me sitting next to a bright incandescent reading lamp (ie 150-300w) is more hot and sweaty than cozy warm after maybe half an hour.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 11:18 AM on April 2, 2023
And I don't agree. Even in Toronto winter, for me sitting next to a bright incandescent reading lamp (ie 150-300w) is more hot and sweaty than cozy warm after maybe half an hour.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 11:18 AM on April 2, 2023
"...easier to spot criminals who might lurk in the shadows."
My Dad worked in clandestine stuff for part of his career, and he was fond of pointing out that without lights you don't get shadows. There's precious little evidence for outdoor lighting reducing crime (yes, I've read several of the papers purporting to show a link), mostly it's just a way to sell off-peak electricity and destroy night seeing.
posted by straw at 12:32 PM on April 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
My Dad worked in clandestine stuff for part of his career, and he was fond of pointing out that without lights you don't get shadows. There's precious little evidence for outdoor lighting reducing crime (yes, I've read several of the papers purporting to show a link), mostly it's just a way to sell off-peak electricity and destroy night seeing.
posted by straw at 12:32 PM on April 2, 2023 [1 favorite]
Well I tried the fancy Waveform LED bulbs and don't like the resulting blue light, so I'm returning them. The weird thing is they are 3000K bulbs just like my cheap Feit 3000K bulbs, and they measure the same in an Android app. But the Waveform bulbs look noticeably bluer and in my late-night-TV room that's not what I want. Lots more details on my blog.
Now I'm curious about bulbs that get redder as you dim them, like an incandescent. Philips Warm Glow bulbs do that but seem to be a hard-to-get product. Considering a programmable bulb now.
posted by Nelson at 10:11 AM on April 7, 2023
Now I'm curious about bulbs that get redder as you dim them, like an incandescent. Philips Warm Glow bulbs do that but seem to be a hard-to-get product. Considering a programmable bulb now.
posted by Nelson at 10:11 AM on April 7, 2023
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posted by interogative mood at 2:16 PM on March 30, 2023 [6 favorites]