I’m in a nasty frame of mind right now, and this is what my 'tism brain decided to laser focus on for several hours. I’m mad that my light bulbs cost 10x more than they used to, and don’t last any longer, and my power bill is higher than ever.
Yeah yeah, I know, it’s probably just capitalism shitting it up on purpose for profit. And bulb science is probably solid, I guess. I’m just pissed off that I just barely managed to scrape through this pay period with $2.78 left in the bank before I default on my mortgage.
Anyway, any lightbulb science comrades got any info?
They get too hot and the 0.07$ capacitor they put in it dries out and dies. You want the 0.09$ capacitor which lasts 1000 times longer, but usually they only put those in the 45$ led bulbs.
You can do like me, when they die, take them apart and replace the capacitor with a super deluxe 0.11$ one !
Occasionally, for bigger lamps, they do need actual cooling fins though.
Yes, anything above 15watt needs heatsinks for sure
Holy shit I never thought about what’s inside an LED bulb past the LEDs themselves.
It’s an AC to DC step down voltage regulator and then a multi channel constant current regulator to drive the led and the current setting is changed by a microcontroller which usually has a Bluetooth or ZigBee or ism/315/433/915 MHz or infrared transceiver for communication with your phone / remote
I’ve never replaced an led bulb and I’ve had them 10+ years.
Dirty power can burn them out, as can bad heat dissipation
It would probably cost like $1 of components to make most led bulbs resilient to all but spookiest of power delivery, but why sell something once when you can make them buy it over and over again
What do you mean dirty power?
Let me copy and paste the top search result from Google:
“Dirty power” is a term used to describe electricity that deviates from this standard due to spikes, surges, and dips. The term also applies to electricity that’s been tainted by an outside influence, such as a stray wireless signal. Feb 13, 2023
Appreciate you thanks fam ❤️
No problem, the cost is just one passive aggressive comment 🙂
I’ve never had an LED bulb go bad. Even those that sit in a drawer or box for years at a time.
You’re either buying really shit bulbs or you’ve got shit power. Probably the latter.
Your bulbs might be burning out because of overheating. These bulbs have their powersupply in the bulb screw, so there’s no real place for the heat to go. I have a ceiling lamp that causes normal bulbs to reach temperatures as high as 100c, and so they burn out every couple of moths. This might be your issue.
Edit: fixed misspellHow does one fix this?
Look for bulbs with metal fins where the white plastic is in your image. They’re there as a heat sink so the heat disperses into the air rather than building up inside.
for the same reason diablo canyon 2 can’t be more like diablo canyon 1
Pay for on brand bulbs they last waaaay longer
where are you people buying your bulbs, i have not touched onein a year at least
Either an electrical problem that’s burning them out or shitty bulbs.
If you have a dimmer switch, you have to get dimmer compatible bulbs.
shitty bulbs.
+1 on that as a potential issue. Don’t recall the brand, but I had bought a pack of light bulbs where the whole pack was having issues, to the point I called an electrician to check. When the electrician came and saw the brand he told me “those are garbage” and that he had seen plenty of people having issues with that brand.
I threw those away, bought some other brand. The exact same places where I was having to replace light bulbs often no longer had any issues.
What brand is it?
Don’t recall the brand. Threw the remaining ones out.
It’s either the wiring in your house or the light fixtures or both… If I remember right older light fixtures, like before the last 15 years, don’t have the right type of power regulation and it kills LEDs quick. Source: Not an expert just have the same problem in my place.
LEDs run on DC power, not AC like regular bulbs; therefore there is a power supply inside that converts and regulates the power.
The two most common failures in LED systems is shitty power supplies dying prematurely, either because of heat or because of just crappy cheap hardware, or the design is wrong which overcurrents the LEDs which kills it.
I remember my uncle had all the lighting in his kitchen changed to LED with a fancy light, it was bright and really nice, but the power supply died (I tested it by switching the PSU between the units, all the LEDs were fine, just the power supplies sucked). I couldn’t find a replacement for the same serial number, so I put another PSU from a different brand I got on eBay and it was fine. The original PSUs were all dead within the first 4 years, the aftermarket ones are all still fine 6 years later.
Obviously for these lightbulbs, this is a bit harder to do since they are all in one, so it’s probably a good idea to get higher quality bulbs. I am not an expert, but I really like the Philips ones I have right now that are rated for 50000 hours (though they are relatively new, only bought them this year, so I can’t say much about their reliability).
TL;DR: Not all LEDs are created equal.
I’ve had Philips hues for a few years now. And they’re still going strong.
Also. I will vouch for smart lights. Unlike some smart appliances, I can fully see the advantage to them. Laid in bed all comfy and can’t be arsed moving but need to turn them off? Have no bullets for your designated light turning off gun? Just open the app, and you can turn them off, or whatever colour that works for you. Or just tell Alexa to do it.
This is my alt account since lemmy.ml is down at the moment of writing this.
Never had a smart light before, I have regular LED bulbs. I heard Philips Hue are now forcing users to sign up to their cloud thingy to control the bulbs, but I haven’t looked any deeper. Do you find yourself using the colour changing feature, or only change colour temperature/nothing?
Ahh, okay. I haven’t seen anything about cloud stuff, but I don’t really change the colour much myself, in the bedroom at least, and the times I have domne, it’s just through the app. But I do have an account for out of home use.
I use Corsair and the desktop app to control the ones in my other room, though. But the last time I set that up, it was just the push button.
Also, you need an account if you link it to alexa. But that’s the only ones I know of that need an account.
In my opinion, I find the use of the light strip to be really helpful, as I can just set it to either match my pc lights or what’s happening on my main monitor. In the bedroom, I like having the option to dim then, or change them to a softer? Or more subtle colour if I’m watching a movie and eating. I feel it makes it a bit cosier.
I do find it quite appealing for changing colour temperature, having it on 5600k during the day, and as low as it will go for the evening.
They’re those things where it feels like you don’t need them until after you have them, and it’s all much easier.
I’m pretty sure you can set automations up as well so that they just do stuff. You can get them to get brighter as you’re waking up. You can set them to do stuff at certain times, such as sun rise and sunset, and to come on when you get home. And some others.
