Other than as an interesting hobby project to see if you can do it (which is completely valid, I've absolutely done projects that, from a practical perspective don't make sense but I learned lot in the process), this doesn't seem worth it. Unless there are literally no open source Wifi smart bulbs, even after you fix this one, this cheap AliExpress bulb almost definitely has terrible heat management that will kill it far faster than an LED bulb actually should die (which seems to be a problem among cheap LED bulbs more generally and I can't imagine is better in smart bulbs).
If anyone has any experience with this though, I'd love to hear about it.
I bought some "Kauf" model light bulbs about a year and a half ago in a direct quest to get something "HomeAssistant Only"
The "RGB" color reproduction is...poor and the illumination they offer is a bit middling. But the biggest issue I had was the things would simply die after a while! I'd get maybe 3-4 months before they'd start flickering, then eventually stop entirely
Thankfully since you can only buy either 1 or 4 packs I had plenty of spares, but I have to admit I've since retreated from the idea of "smart bulbs" for now
On the other end of the price/quality spectrum, I have Hues that are still going strong after 6+ years of daily use. You can use them hub-free in HA using a ZigBee dongle.
Coincidentally, this post and another post[^1] about the cantenna[^2], something I built with old friends back in 2001, are currently on the HN front page. Random and fun!
The Zigbee answer would’ve been to use Zigbee Group Messaging to group the lights together so that all seven bulbs respond to a single command, rather than having to send a Zigbee packet seven times.
But I do enjoy de-Tuya-ing no-name bulbs. Now that ESPHome has merged Beken support, it’s even easier. I’ve been able to un-crap dozens of cheap WiFi smart bulbs so satisfying to have them running ESPHome.
a lot of esoteric words here. is there some documentation to this setup? I'm not sure where to even start, but don't want Govee relentlessly forcing me to give them my location to use smart bulbs
I wish I could get bulbs that are easily repairable. Zigbee bulbs I bought ~7 years ago have started failing in a very specific way, the smart functionality stops working intermittently then entirely, but they work fine as dumb bulbs after that point.
I'd like to see bulbs that can be assembled by hand in order: socket, controller, LEDs, enclosure. This way if any one part fails I only need to replace that part. Parts that have failed can be sent back and recycled.
>I'd like to see bulbs that can be assembled by hand in order: socket, controller, LEDs, enclosure.
I'll bet you dollars that none of those things are failing.
It's very likely capacitors. To make these cost effective, they have AC/DC converters and aren't putting a ton of love into SMPS buck switching. They're choosing the cheapest components pushed to their limits. Or, just plain don't care at all.
The rated hours of a typical electrolytic cap is something like 2000 hours at it's rating and at 20ºC which these are not. So if you need more than that you over-rate it. But that's expensive, and someone will look at it and say "You have 12VAC, you can buy a 16V cap and that's all".
Without too fine a point on the underlying issue... Stop buying future-trash made by people that really don't care what they're making.
> "You have 12VAC, you can buy a 16V cap and that's all"
12VAC has an RMS measure of 12 volts but a peak voltage of ~17V. (I'm not saying that no one's done exactly that, but when they did, they were operating outside the rating in the first 1/120th of a second of operation.)
A widespread DC socket standard for LEDs would go a long way towards this. The fitting could then do the AC to DC conversion separately and could house any controller, but the LEDs itself would be very simple.
AFAIK lightning solutions using PoE already exist in commercial space.
For general use, I'd assume that PoE hardware/software is a bit too expensive, but maybe we can have similarly priced bulbs/lightstrips than Philips Hue.
Eh... not a great fit. POE++ Super Extra is 100W per port. Figure a dumb 75W-equivilent is like 10-14W. You get maybe 8 bulbs per run assuming everything is exactly as rated.
But specifying doesn't work like that. You won't know if someone will plug in 24W bulbs. You need to plan sockets for the most someone could use.
If you wanted DC retrofit, you would be better of doing it at the light switch and just using the same wiring and sockets.
California government is large, and exceeds past the role of government in other states.
They pushed for all new construction to require a GU24 bulb socket because it would "mean" high efficiency. It was a massive failure with practically the only market in the world for the GU24 connector in CA. Now, they rolled it back so you are still required to use high efficiency bulbs but the connector isn't important anymore. No concern that of all the GU24 fixtures that will need to be replaced and sent to landfill.
Converters for GU24 to use E26 (Ikea standard!) are $1 retail. Doesn't seem like you need to throw them all away?
>No concern that of all the GU24 fixtures that will need to be replaced and sent to landfill. //
Do you believe that legislatures weren't trying their best, it's not easy to make economical decisions when powerful profit seekers are trying to undermine you at every turn. Maybe they erred, I'm not sure it's as obviously wrong as you imagine. Who hasn't backed the wrong standard at some point?
>Do you believe that legislatures weren't trying their best,
That is an interesting defense of ineffective bureaucracy.
"It's OK they stepped into an area they had no idea about, made command decisions that limited customer choice, because you can just buy some Made in China adapters!" Well, that's an opinion.
> Do you believe that legislatures weren't trying their best,
Common sense would dictate that legislatures can't "try their best". It's a collection of people that have vastly different motives and reasons for being there. They aren't a team with a common vision and a common goal (e.g. win the game through a series of plays they've already practiced), even if they are in the same political party. Neither party is a monolith, whether on the state or national level. Everyone has different priorities, concerns, and opinions on different topics, regardless whether they have a D, R or I.
Sadly, it's a feature of the legislative process. It's designed to destroy special interests and require vast support to get things done. Sadly support no longer means votes as much as money.
I had some "down lights" in an apartment I lived in in Australia that did this
Annoyingly for a single (small) room it had *three* switches, each controlling two lights. The ones on either side of the room were perhaps 8 feet apart, with two more at the near end of the room (about another 4 feet from the first two)
Replacing them with compatible smart bulbs of any kind due to them being DC proved surprisingly difficult in Australia. Though I suspect countries with larger markets would fare better
This is such a simple and obvious idea, I don't know why nobody does this. I guess they can't agree on a standard, but the first company to create this would probably also set the standard (and the second one would set it again).
Power losses mainly. I did 24V wiring on campers and boats, and it's ridiculous how much copper you have to put in and then still have issues with the voltage drop.
110 or even better 220V AC is just so much better in that respect. If only people wouldn't call a diode bridge and a couple of capacitors a driver. Which is what you'll find in most of LED bulbs, and which is why they die so fast.
The adapter would still screw into the 220V bulb socket, but you could then just replace the LED part when it burns out, rather than having to throw out the voltage converter as well.
That is an orthogonal concern, the two aren't really comparable. It would be good if the LEDs didn't burn out, and it would also be good if we didn't have to throw away both parts when one failed.
Does anyone remember when lightbulbs were a thin glass bubble and a piece of wire? Compare that in a landfill to this thing. Something that is effectively gone in 10 years if crushed and left outside vs this that many part will look the same in 1000.
I guess I enjoy the extreme hypocritical nature of "smart home" things from people that talk about climate change and living wages and etc. You're buying future-landfill trash from slaves because you think it's neat that your lights are on timers....
On the other hand, to be fair... I have "dumb" LEDs that I like (Reveals because I know what color should look like) and obviously there is a break-even point of not spending 95% of your power in heat when you want it for light. It's really just the "smart" parts that I find just so unnecessary.
I prefer smart light switches to smart bulbs myself. It seems like a cleaner, less wasteful way of getting what i really want - the ability to turn lights on and off from an app/through voice.
Putting all this circuitry into a bulb with a limited lifespan seems silly to me, like the old TV/VCR combos. When I used to sell televisions we always steered people away from those because invariably one would fail before the other, making the device far less useful.
Those light bulbs took like 10x the power for the same amount of light and dumped 100ws of heat to light a room in a time you might be trying to cool it. I don't think there's any reasonable way to argue incandescent light bulbs as the environmentally friendly option.
Depends if you are calculating the costs in the summer or the winter.
My point is you are comparing to cheap garbage that took components and rare metals from around the world shipped on tankers to China where they were produced in harmful conditions, then shipped back around the world where they work for a year and are thrown in the landfill to sit for 1000.
The cost of those lightbulbs is not nearly as easy as the efficiency sticker on the box.
I'd be willing to bet the embodied manufacturing energy in a shitty Walmart bulb is greater than the energy it will save over its short 18 month lifespan.
Climate change is on track to seriously mess up the world over the next 100 years. In that time, a bunch of these in landfill will..still be there, doing nothing.
It's like the absurdity of worrying about land filled plastic waste: it's not actually the problem. It was oil in the ground before, now it's much less flowable oil in the ground again. It's the stuff getting everywhere else in the biosphere which is an issue, not material stably stored underground.
I'm really disappointed with all the LED lights I tried (except one brand that doesn't exist anymore). Led lights were supposed to last 10 years at 8h per day. Initially they were expensive, but it was possible to get LEDs of good quality. 7 years ago when I was building my house I bought 100 gu10 7W 550 lumen cool white "halogen style" 240V led lights. In these 7 years I replaced around 16. Many of these lights are used 16+ h/day. I'm very happy with them. Unfortunately the brand dissappeared (it was a reseller brand).
Since then ever single LED I bought failed with a year or two. Big outdoor led floodlights 25W,50W and few 100W. Every single one fails in a couple of months. They're not even used that much as they have PIRs, maybe they are on 20min per day. Then there are E17 lights I bought for a small workshop (12 of them). None lasted over 6 months (used few hours per week in an unheated workshop). I'm not even buying the cheapest LEDs. It's the same regardless if I pay for "premium" or the cheapest.
I have so many broken LEDs I started fixing them. I have a hot air soldering station and a pcb heating tool. They always fail the same way. One of the LEDs is burned. Why? Because they are driven too hard that's why. If they were driven with 10% less power they would have a chance to last.
For sure they do. I spoke about these floodlights with the people in the shop I bought them at and they had a representative of the supplier come every month in a van to collect all the dead ones and give them new ones. I can't understand how they could sell them at such low price, replace 40%, and still make a profit. Perhaps they fix them themselves?
I noticed that virtually all LEDs driver resistors are two vastly different values, in parallel. Such that if you snip off the correct one, you are left with a slightly lower output light, that consumes half the power and last many time longer.
It's like a secret cheat code for people in the know. It's almost a conspiracy.
Just cut off the highest value resistor with a pair of snips.
This is a really good tip. Although ripping them apart is the last thing I'd like to do when I buy a new set of lights I might have to start doing that.
Virtually all of them fail the same way. One(or more) of the individual LED diodes fail open. They are usually discolored as if they burned. I'm fixing them by replacing the diodes that failed (I desoldering them from other lights that failed). I always buy cool white Led lights and all of them use 1W diodes it seems (at least I think they're 1W, there is no writing on them).
Have you tried some from Waveform Lighting? I have some of their bulbs (none of which has broken yet) and I selected them because of the low blue light and zero flicker. (No relationship with them beyond being a satisfied customer).
I just purchased like $1500 worth of linear LED's from these guys for my workshop. I'm really sensitive to LED flicker and these were one of the only websites I found that specifically talked about flicker and claimed their LED's don't do it.
Does anyone else notice when LED's flicker at 60hz?
I was in a restaurant last week that had some of those LED's made to look like old time lights and the flicker in the room was terrible. If anyone moved their hand or the menu, you could see the strobe effect very easily.
I do. Fortunately my house (full of led lighting) only has one place with visible flicker: my vent hood. Strangely enough I’m the only one in my family who notices the flicker, but it annoys me whenever anyone uses those lights while cooking.
I haven't. I should've probably mentioned I'm in Europe. That most likely excludes them for me.
I've had a look at their page, they don't have the fittings I get (gu10, E27 - probably these are not used in the US) and no European resellers as far as I can find (and no 4500K option, but that's a minor thing).
I bought higher CRI LEDs from IKEA about 4 years ago when I moved into my apartment, they are all still working. But those LEDs are not sold anymore, hopefully the newer ones are as decent.
Keep your receipt details and return to seller (if in UK) if they don't meet the stated lifetime. AFAIK there are no time limits to Consumer Rights Act returns beyond 'expected product lifetime'.
Although good that it's possible to get a free replacement, I suspect the broken bulb will still end up in a landfill or polluting some place in the world with more micro plastics. It's a real shame when manufacturers would rather make a worse product and pocket the few cents difference, environment be dammed.
One of the big problems with the process is that people don't return things because of the hassle, so the rubbish remains profitable, meaning the flow to landfill doesn't stop. You can attempt to dictate a better situation, but that doesn't always go well ...
This is the same in Poland (the country I moved to), but who can find receipts for light bulbs bought 6 months ago... I do keep them now (especially for more expensive ones like these Led floodlights). In fact that's how I got through so many of them. I bought them, a couple failed few months later, I'd take them back to the shop, they would just give me new ones in exchange. I'd install these, and they would break again in few months, rinse and repeat. I got so tired of having to swap them up high on a ladder I started fixing them myself and regulating the power supply for lower power (they have a brick style PSU).
Honestly that story is really not as simple as people suggest it is. There is a tradeoff between bulb life and brightness and standardization may have been good for the industry. Technology Connections does a thoughtful deep dive in to this story in this recent video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY
Obviously it is possible to design well or to design badly the LED bulbs.
Those which fail are likely to fail due to inadequate cooling. With good cooling even large currents cannot damage the LEDs. As long as the temperature of the LED is limited there is no need to drive it less.
I have bought 8 years ago about two dozen LED lamps of 1500 lumen (equivalent to 100 W incandescent lamps) and of 4000 K color temperature (slightly yellowish white, but not yellow like those that imitate incandescent lamps), which were made by Philips and which have the same size as traditional incandescent bulbs.
All of those still work flawlessly, while consuming only a little more than half of the power consumed by the compact fluorescent lamps replaced by them.
I do not doubt your experience, but it is possible to choose better LED lamps.
>Those which fail are likely to fail due to inadequate cooling. With good cooling even large currents cannot damage the LEDs. As long as the temperature of the LED is limited there is no need to drive it less.
This seems like a logical conclusion considering lower power extends their life and the diodes that fail are usually discolored (as if they overheated). However, I'm not entirely sure it is as simple as inadequate cooling. All my high power LED floodlights are installed outdoors. I had 3 failures in the middle of winter when outside temperatures are way below zero (I remember these especially well, because climbing a tall ladder in freezing -20C wind is not something you forget easily). My theory is that they initially fail short that's why they appear burned. Also better cooling definitely extends their life, but it is not the only factor. The LED floodlights I mentioned were all housed in flat cast aluminum casings with find. The pcb is made of aluminium (with a very thin white insulating layer and copper traces on top). There is thermal paste between the back of the pcb that is raw aluminium and the case. I can't imagine a more favourable cooling solution. And still these floodlights are amongst the worst LED experiences I had. I tried all sellers available that didetry to charge >6x the price.
>I do not doubt your experience, but it is possible to choose better LED lamps
Perhaps it is location dependent. The lights I had a good experience with were purchased in the UK, but I've since moved to Poland. I'm happy to order from other countries within the EU (I even wanted to get the same LEDs from the UK again, but they don't sell them anymore).
The brands I see around here are either noname/picked up from thin air, kobi, samsung,philips or sometimes Osram. I have to admit I haven't got much experience with Philips or Osram. All the others are the same (including Samsung Pro). I would've bought more of the Philips/Osram lights, but none of my local stores carry them in cool white, ordering one or two online seems a waste of the shipping while I'm not ordering 20 without checking them out first... (if someone says "Philips is great" I'll get a 10 pack) Also I noticed people who like warm rather than cool light seem to have a better experience overall. Two of the best LEDs I have are warm, and they look like the famous Philips Dubai bupbs(I couldn't get any cool whites with the right fitting). They have been living outside for last 7 years, hooked up to a PIR next to a cat's food&water so they are activated a lot. I've replaced the PIR sensors, but the lights are still fine. Again, these were purchased years ago.
If anyone knows any good brands available in Europe, please mention them.
> All my high power LED floodlights are installed outdoors. I had 3 failures in the middle of winter when outside temperatures are way below zero
An SMD LED chip is only a mm or two in size. I doubt that even a -20C wind directly on it could cool it fast enough to make a huge difference just because of lack of surface area.
For a given power level, the chip temperature will be a certain number of degrees warmer than ambient. So if the chip is at 50C in 30C ambient, it'll be something like 30C in 10C ambient.
I write the date I install light-bulbs on the shaft, with a permanent marker. Because I've always had a feeling that bulbs die "too often".
The ones I just checked in my flat which are over four years old are all Osram. I have none older than that, due to moving house too much.
To be honest I just buy whichever bulbs are on sale at the local hardware store.
I've never really gone out of my way to try anything fancy or specific. I did have a pair of Hue bulbs at one point, but I got annoyed with the state mismatch between the bulbs and the switches, and always figured I'd rewire to smart switches in the future and gave up on the lighting until that time.
The only thing that did stick was using a bunch of lamps in my bedroom with a 3-in-1 radio-controller for socket-switches. That's nice, to be able to toggle a bunch of lamps via a little remote in the bed.
Very interesting. An acquaintence was describing something similar - a frustratingly high rate of early failures across various bulb types usually meant to last 10-15 years.
I have exclusively IKEA smart bulbs where the right fitment is available, plus a motley array of other bulbs and LED lamps (often cheapish Chinese brands resold on Amazon) where IKEA doesn't offer something suitable, and I've not had a single failure in ~5 years. Such a disparity is difficult to explain.
It's probably because they're so small, integrated and installed in confined insulated spaces. My house is 5 years old and I've never had an LED light break. The hardware I have is split into the LEDs (bigger ones with a heat sink) and the AC/DC drivers which are installed above the ceiling insulation or in a wall cavity for wall lights. The old school gu10 bulbs are notorious for burning out as well I used to go through about 4 a year just in a kitchen rangehood.
It always irks me when I see these low cost electrolytic capacitors. With operation hours they dry out loose capacitance and typically are the first components to make the bulb worthless.
There are long life, high temp electrolytic cap, but from the picture I can tell these ain't the one and due to competition and fierce price competition won't allow to add in several more cents to make the bulbs last additional 50k/100K/ or more hours. Maybe also not good for reoccurring business. What a waste.
I much prefer smart switches over smart bulbs. Because smart switches always work with you flip them physically whether the network is down or not.
Also smart switches ensure that there is no mismatch between physical switch state and light bulb state.
Before I moved over to smart switches exclusively I had some Philips smart bulbs with wireless switches - it was the most unreliable and finicky setup I ever had.
The only smart thing in a light bulb should be it ability to change color.
I have the Phillips Wiz and they work fine without internet, just need to be on the same wifi network.
They also work with no network at all, directly with the switch, but lack ability to make new changes to things like brightness or color, and instead only work with the details user-set settings or the secondary user-set settings, which are accessed by flipping the switch twice.
I think this is fair. It’s not as if nothing works, they basically revert to dumb bulbs in the absence of wifi, or dumbish bulbs that only remember the two defaults the user had set.
The bulbs can do redshift (going from cold to warm white in the evening), but I agree about the switches... especially if you turn the (ordinary) switch on the wall off, no "smartness" in the bulb can then turn it on if it's unpowered :)
Interestingly I’ve had Phillips Hue for well over 5 years now, but no smart switches. One of the bigger QoL improvements I’ve ever made, especially when the lights automatically change throughout the day.
Between a few specifically named scenes in the Home app, Siri on HomePods, and the normal switches it’s been quite reliable.
Worst case if the internet is down (which stops Siri’s voice to text), or if there’s a wifi issue, or if I’m right next to a switch: I can turn the switch off, wait 2 seconds, turn on and the hue light turns on to a neutral color at a reasonable brightness.
I think any combination of smart lights or switches or both is manageable as long as you have a fast, simple means to power cycle the lights (and they default-on with power).
I don’t think dumb light switches should disappear. They’re phenomenally reliable, have a predictable behaviour, are easily discoverable and never move. The last one is important because when you urgently need to turn a light on, nothing beats a dumb switch.
You get most of that with.good smart switches too. Reliability will never be quite as high, since it's hard to beat physically connecting and disconnecting the wires, but they're reliable enough that I've never had one fail.
But in terms of predictability and discoverability and fixed placement, a good smart switch is no different.
I replaced all switches in my apartment with Lutron smart dimmer & smart switches, and have Philips Hue in some lamps.
- While the color change feature is mostly gimmick, the adjustable color temperature is really useful. You can't get that in a smart dimmer / switch
- Dimmers don't work very well with LED bulbs, and they can flicker at low end of brightness setting
- At least the Lutron smart switches I used don't work very well with LED lights with minimal power draw. Apparently due to the way they work, in off state, there still will be a little bit of current leaking to the circuit, which would be enough to power some LED bulbs
Philips makes some bulbs that change color temperature to get warmer the more you dim them. Not as flexible as a smart bulb, but it gets you most of the way there.
Same. Lightwave switches replaced several dozen Zigbee bulbs. Apart from the lack of reliable control over state, Zigbee at least gets slow if your house isn't conducive to direct paths unless you add repeaters, and someone manually flicking a single switch might make the mesh unreliable for several rooms. I'm sure it can work well, but it was too much hassle.
Ended on Lightwave because it works on two wire setups and my wiring is old.
Most hardwired smart switches close or open the circuit either electronically or with relays depending on supported load, so whether or not there is power to the bulbs is entirely dependent on the switch state. So yes, they can always match light state, ignoring the case of a burnt out bulb.
Right, this is how I have my ESPHome-based switches wired. I thought you were referring to the mechanical state of the actual switch on the wall - I've gone with retrofit switch modules since I wanted to retain the tactile switch flip (just now they all work like dual-switches).
For anyone interested in more of this sort of stuff - including ways to modify some brands so they are not being driven as hard, it's always worth to check out Big Clive on YouTube.
This isn't necessarily true. I tried to measure the PWM of my Cree and Philips smart bulbs, and what I found is that for RGB mode, they used PWM, but for white mode (which appears to use a 2700k led and 6500k led) they current dim both leds, and then use PWM to pulse the warm and cool leds on and off to achieve the target warmth. The Philips bulb actually syncs this so while the warm led is on, the cool led is off, and vice versa, so even though there is flicker, the total lumens eminating from the bulb is constant.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 157 ms ] threadIf anyone has any experience with this though, I'd love to hear about it.
The "RGB" color reproduction is...poor and the illumination they offer is a bit middling. But the biggest issue I had was the things would simply die after a while! I'd get maybe 3-4 months before they'd start flickering, then eventually stop entirely
Thankfully since you can only buy either 1 or 4 packs I had plenty of spares, but I have to admit I've since retreated from the idea of "smart bulbs" for now
Coincidentally, this post and another post[^1] about the cantenna[^2], something I built with old friends back in 2001, are currently on the HN front page. Random and fun!
[^1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37826256
[^2]: https://makezine.com/article/home/food-beverage/pringles-can...
But I do enjoy de-Tuya-ing no-name bulbs. Now that ESPHome has merged Beken support, it’s even easier. I’ve been able to un-crap dozens of cheap WiFi smart bulbs so satisfying to have them running ESPHome.
I'd like to see bulbs that can be assembled by hand in order: socket, controller, LEDs, enclosure. This way if any one part fails I only need to replace that part. Parts that have failed can be sent back and recycled.
I'll bet you dollars that none of those things are failing.
It's very likely capacitors. To make these cost effective, they have AC/DC converters and aren't putting a ton of love into SMPS buck switching. They're choosing the cheapest components pushed to their limits. Or, just plain don't care at all.
The rated hours of a typical electrolytic cap is something like 2000 hours at it's rating and at 20ºC which these are not. So if you need more than that you over-rate it. But that's expensive, and someone will look at it and say "You have 12VAC, you can buy a 16V cap and that's all".
Without too fine a point on the underlying issue... Stop buying future-trash made by people that really don't care what they're making.
12VAC has an RMS measure of 12 volts but a peak voltage of ~17V. (I'm not saying that no one's done exactly that, but when they did, they were operating outside the rating in the first 1/120th of a second of operation.)
It's tantalums that you super-duper do not ever exceed the rated voltage of, and double that for reverse polarity.
I can see California behind a tree rubbing it's hands together.
Would you not like a DC light socket standard? It’s quite the waste to have AC to DC happen in every light bulb.
It would be a pain to retro fit though.
For general use, I'd assume that PoE hardware/software is a bit too expensive, but maybe we can have similarly priced bulbs/lightstrips than Philips Hue.
But specifying doesn't work like that. You won't know if someone will plug in 24W bulbs. You need to plan sockets for the most someone could use.
If you wanted DC retrofit, you would be better of doing it at the light switch and just using the same wiring and sockets.
They pushed for all new construction to require a GU24 bulb socket because it would "mean" high efficiency. It was a massive failure with practically the only market in the world for the GU24 connector in CA. Now, they rolled it back so you are still required to use high efficiency bulbs but the connector isn't important anymore. No concern that of all the GU24 fixtures that will need to be replaced and sent to landfill.
The comment is Anthony Adams here in this meme [0] is California looking to adopt a new socket because past is prologue. https://preview.redd.it/e4t802ztnqb31.png?width=1024&auto=we...
GU24 update: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/update-california-title-24-fu...
>No concern that of all the GU24 fixtures that will need to be replaced and sent to landfill. //
Do you believe that legislatures weren't trying their best, it's not easy to make economical decisions when powerful profit seekers are trying to undermine you at every turn. Maybe they erred, I'm not sure it's as obviously wrong as you imagine. Who hasn't backed the wrong standard at some point?
That is an interesting defense of ineffective bureaucracy.
"It's OK they stepped into an area they had no idea about, made command decisions that limited customer choice, because you can just buy some Made in China adapters!" Well, that's an opinion.
"This very kindness stings with intolerable insult" CL Lewis. I encourage you to go read the whole thing. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/526469-of-all-tyrannies-a-t...
Common sense would dictate that legislatures can't "try their best". It's a collection of people that have vastly different motives and reasons for being there. They aren't a team with a common vision and a common goal (e.g. win the game through a series of plays they've already practiced), even if they are in the same political party. Neither party is a monolith, whether on the state or national level. Everyone has different priorities, concerns, and opinions on different topics, regardless whether they have a D, R or I.
Sadly, it's a feature of the legislative process. It's designed to destroy special interests and require vast support to get things done. Sadly support no longer means votes as much as money.
Annoyingly for a single (small) room it had *three* switches, each controlling two lights. The ones on either side of the room were perhaps 8 feet apart, with two more at the near end of the room (about another 4 feet from the first two)
Replacing them with compatible smart bulbs of any kind due to them being DC proved surprisingly difficult in Australia. Though I suspect countries with larger markets would fare better
110 or even better 220V AC is just so much better in that respect. If only people wouldn't call a diode bridge and a couple of capacitors a driver. Which is what you'll find in most of LED bulbs, and which is why they die so fast.
Because this was and is achievable.
If we're redesigning the power supply it's actually much cheaper to make it not cause burnout on the LEDs than to make it replaceable.
If you're designing for cheap LEDs, then it might be up to 80% of the cost. But it's worth it because even cheap trash LEDs will last tens of years.
If you go for good nice LEDs then maybe 50%. This would be indestructible, but it will cost you.
I guess I enjoy the extreme hypocritical nature of "smart home" things from people that talk about climate change and living wages and etc. You're buying future-landfill trash from slaves because you think it's neat that your lights are on timers....
On the other hand, to be fair... I have "dumb" LEDs that I like (Reveals because I know what color should look like) and obviously there is a break-even point of not spending 95% of your power in heat when you want it for light. It's really just the "smart" parts that I find just so unnecessary.
Putting all this circuitry into a bulb with a limited lifespan seems silly to me, like the old TV/VCR combos. When I used to sell televisions we always steered people away from those because invariably one would fail before the other, making the device far less useful.
My point is you are comparing to cheap garbage that took components and rare metals from around the world shipped on tankers to China where they were produced in harmful conditions, then shipped back around the world where they work for a year and are thrown in the landfill to sit for 1000.
The cost of those lightbulbs is not nearly as easy as the efficiency sticker on the box.
Climate change is on track to seriously mess up the world over the next 100 years. In that time, a bunch of these in landfill will..still be there, doing nothing.
It's like the absurdity of worrying about land filled plastic waste: it's not actually the problem. It was oil in the ground before, now it's much less flowable oil in the ground again. It's the stuff getting everywhere else in the biosphere which is an issue, not material stably stored underground.
Since then ever single LED I bought failed with a year or two. Big outdoor led floodlights 25W,50W and few 100W. Every single one fails in a couple of months. They're not even used that much as they have PIRs, maybe they are on 20min per day. Then there are E17 lights I bought for a small workshop (12 of them). None lasted over 6 months (used few hours per week in an unheated workshop). I'm not even buying the cheapest LEDs. It's the same regardless if I pay for "premium" or the cheapest.
I have so many broken LEDs I started fixing them. I have a hot air soldering station and a pcb heating tool. They always fail the same way. One of the LEDs is burned. Why? Because they are driven too hard that's why. If they were driven with 10% less power they would have a chance to last.
I'm sure they know.
It's like a secret cheat code for people in the know. It's almost a conspiracy.
Just cut off the highest value resistor with a pair of snips.
https://www.waveformlighting.com/
Does anyone else notice when LED's flicker at 60hz?
I was in a restaurant last week that had some of those LED's made to look like old time lights and the flicker in the room was terrible. If anyone moved their hand or the menu, you could see the strobe effect very easily.
I've had a look at their page, they don't have the fittings I get (gu10, E27 - probably these are not used in the US) and no European resellers as far as I can find (and no 4500K option, but that's a minor thing).
You are describing Dubai LEDs, which are driven lower, last longer, but are dimmer:
https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-royal-li...
Last mention on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35003411
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
Those which fail are likely to fail due to inadequate cooling. With good cooling even large currents cannot damage the LEDs. As long as the temperature of the LED is limited there is no need to drive it less.
I have bought 8 years ago about two dozen LED lamps of 1500 lumen (equivalent to 100 W incandescent lamps) and of 4000 K color temperature (slightly yellowish white, but not yellow like those that imitate incandescent lamps), which were made by Philips and which have the same size as traditional incandescent bulbs.
All of those still work flawlessly, while consuming only a little more than half of the power consumed by the compact fluorescent lamps replaced by them.
I do not doubt your experience, but it is possible to choose better LED lamps.
This seems like a logical conclusion considering lower power extends their life and the diodes that fail are usually discolored (as if they overheated). However, I'm not entirely sure it is as simple as inadequate cooling. All my high power LED floodlights are installed outdoors. I had 3 failures in the middle of winter when outside temperatures are way below zero (I remember these especially well, because climbing a tall ladder in freezing -20C wind is not something you forget easily). My theory is that they initially fail short that's why they appear burned. Also better cooling definitely extends their life, but it is not the only factor. The LED floodlights I mentioned were all housed in flat cast aluminum casings with find. The pcb is made of aluminium (with a very thin white insulating layer and copper traces on top). There is thermal paste between the back of the pcb that is raw aluminium and the case. I can't imagine a more favourable cooling solution. And still these floodlights are amongst the worst LED experiences I had. I tried all sellers available that didetry to charge >6x the price.
>I do not doubt your experience, but it is possible to choose better LED lamps
Perhaps it is location dependent. The lights I had a good experience with were purchased in the UK, but I've since moved to Poland. I'm happy to order from other countries within the EU (I even wanted to get the same LEDs from the UK again, but they don't sell them anymore).
The brands I see around here are either noname/picked up from thin air, kobi, samsung,philips or sometimes Osram. I have to admit I haven't got much experience with Philips or Osram. All the others are the same (including Samsung Pro). I would've bought more of the Philips/Osram lights, but none of my local stores carry them in cool white, ordering one or two online seems a waste of the shipping while I'm not ordering 20 without checking them out first... (if someone says "Philips is great" I'll get a 10 pack) Also I noticed people who like warm rather than cool light seem to have a better experience overall. Two of the best LEDs I have are warm, and they look like the famous Philips Dubai bupbs(I couldn't get any cool whites with the right fitting). They have been living outside for last 7 years, hooked up to a PIR next to a cat's food&water so they are activated a lot. I've replaced the PIR sensors, but the lights are still fine. Again, these were purchased years ago.
If anyone knows any good brands available in Europe, please mention them.
An SMD LED chip is only a mm or two in size. I doubt that even a -20C wind directly on it could cool it fast enough to make a huge difference just because of lack of surface area.
For that I saw in dead lamps/floodlights I opened I mostly wondered how this managed to even last for the time it did.
The best engineering of a LED light I ever saw is still the 2013-ish era Maglite bulb. It just works, no overheating, no nothing.
The ones I just checked in my flat which are over four years old are all Osram. I have none older than that, due to moving house too much.
To be honest I just buy whichever bulbs are on sale at the local hardware store.
I've never really gone out of my way to try anything fancy or specific. I did have a pair of Hue bulbs at one point, but I got annoyed with the state mismatch between the bulbs and the switches, and always figured I'd rewire to smart switches in the future and gave up on the lighting until that time.
The only thing that did stick was using a bunch of lamps in my bedroom with a 3-in-1 radio-controller for socket-switches. That's nice, to be able to toggle a bunch of lamps via a little remote in the bed.
> All of those still work flawlessly
That's the point: you (mostly) can't buy LEDs made 8 years ago new. The LEDs I have from a decade ago weigh three times as much.
I have exclusively IKEA smart bulbs where the right fitment is available, plus a motley array of other bulbs and LED lamps (often cheapish Chinese brands resold on Amazon) where IKEA doesn't offer something suitable, and I've not had a single failure in ~5 years. Such a disparity is difficult to explain.
There are long life, high temp electrolytic cap, but from the picture I can tell these ain't the one and due to competition and fierce price competition won't allow to add in several more cents to make the bulbs last additional 50k/100K/ or more hours. Maybe also not good for reoccurring business. What a waste.
Also smart switches ensure that there is no mismatch between physical switch state and light bulb state.
Before I moved over to smart switches exclusively I had some Philips smart bulbs with wireless switches - it was the most unreliable and finicky setup I ever had.
The only smart thing in a light bulb should be it ability to change color.
They also work with no network at all, directly with the switch, but lack ability to make new changes to things like brightness or color, and instead only work with the details user-set settings or the secondary user-set settings, which are accessed by flipping the switch twice.
I think this is fair. It’s not as if nothing works, they basically revert to dumb bulbs in the absence of wifi, or dumbish bulbs that only remember the two defaults the user had set.
Between a few specifically named scenes in the Home app, Siri on HomePods, and the normal switches it’s been quite reliable.
Worst case if the internet is down (which stops Siri’s voice to text), or if there’s a wifi issue, or if I’m right next to a switch: I can turn the switch off, wait 2 seconds, turn on and the hue light turns on to a neutral color at a reasonable brightness.
I think any combination of smart lights or switches or both is manageable as long as you have a fast, simple means to power cycle the lights (and they default-on with power).
I don’t think dumb light switches should disappear. They’re phenomenally reliable, have a predictable behaviour, are easily discoverable and never move. The last one is important because when you urgently need to turn a light on, nothing beats a dumb switch.
But in terms of predictability and discoverability and fixed placement, a good smart switch is no different.
Probably better than the alternative for most people but just something to be aware of.
- While the color change feature is mostly gimmick, the adjustable color temperature is really useful. You can't get that in a smart dimmer / switch
- Dimmers don't work very well with LED bulbs, and they can flicker at low end of brightness setting
- At least the Lutron smart switches I used don't work very well with LED lights with minimal power draw. Apparently due to the way they work, in off state, there still will be a little bit of current leaking to the circuit, which would be enough to power some LED bulbs
I've had this problem with dumb-on/off switches and LED bulbs. Stray currents are a known issue with LED fixtures in general.
Ended on Lightwave because it works on two wire setups and my wiring is old.
I've not seen any smart switches which can mechanically actuate the switch.
This applies to e.g. Lightwave switches.
https://www.youtube.com/@bigclivedotcom
> allows the module to be powered and the other ones allow the control of the PWMs.
Does this refer to pulse width modulation? If these are PWM bulbs I'd suggest staying away from them at any cost.