Small UK owned streetlight design company cannot design own LED drivers?

[tooki]

The fact that its banned in this way means streetlight buyers simply wont touch it…even though they are outdoor lighting….its a total knee jerk reaction ,and totally without logical basis , but that’s the way things are.

There are plenty of installed streetlights with 100Hz flicker going to zero every 10ms, and nobody ever complains about them...but this is the problem...once something is written into an EU regulation, the world stops in mindless abeyance of it.

What an astonishingly arrogant attitude: “I am not sensitive to flicker, therefore it’s a silly non-issue by EU bureaucrats.” No, those rules came to pass due to real issues by real people. It can be measured, and a certain percentage of people are more sensitive to flicker than others.

Do you take the same attitude towards, say, allergies? “I’m not allergic to peanuts, therefore peanut allergies are a lie!”

Just to make sure do you know for reality it is the 100Hz flicker you have problems with?
Al the TL (tube lights) and Sodium pressure lamps on conventional ballasts were 100Hz (120Hz in US) and no-one complained about them till they were EOL.

Except that’s not true, either! Plenty of people complained of issues from traditional fluorescent lighting.

[tggzzz]

There seems to be a common thread here......................................

In his defense this is probably his first or one of his first jobs and he ended at a strange company claiming to be A but acting like B.

I think he's been in more or less the same field for about a decade now, changing jobs at an average turnover rate (a couple years?).

That raises a generic question that treez might like to ponder....

There are two approaches to a career:

• be a jack-of-all-trades and master of none
• be a world expert on some topic

The former has the virtue that it tends to protect from the worst changes in the job market - but you are more expendable/replaceable.
The latter has the virtue that employers know you are unreplacable and valuable - but only while that topic is of interest to employers.

Either choice is valid and down to personal preference - but one way or another a choice will be made!

It could very well be that he's only found companies that meet that description, or that he's been at the same one all along and neither management nor their employee(s) (or at least just the one) realizes what they want to do, and how.

We owe this curiously long experience to OP's affinity for online forums, at least three over the years I'm aware of.  Always seems to keep popping up.

While there can be good valid arguments for anonymity, in a small field it can be difficult to remain anonymous.

[jancumps]

We don't know until the discussions on that stabilise. Whatever happens, I bet that the impact on switch mode module production will be neglectable.

[Kjelt]

hat raises a generic question that treez might like to ponder....
There are two approaches to a career:

• be a jack-of-all-trades and master of none
• be a world expert on some topic

The former has the virtue that it tends to protect from the worst changes in the job market - but you are more expendable/replaceable.
The latter has the virtue that employers know you are unreplacable and valuable - but only while that topic is of interest to employers.

Either choice is valid and down to personal preference - but one way or another a choice will be made!

I wonder if this is still valid for electronics / software / any tech job.
To become a master in any of these fields in a company in this day of age you have to look ahead and learn yourself topics that are not so hot but are becoming hot. And have the ability to pick the right ones from the ones that never get the attention. You have to have the knowledge and experience just before companies are getting interested, in the meanwhile performing top notch in your current role.
That is not so easy anymore. I sometimes say to my partner who is a college educated nurse on a cardiac department, that if the human heart (body) would change as fast as the electronics/software field you had to re-study the total anatomy since you would have an alien body instead of a known human body.

[james_s]

Just to make sure do you know for reality it is the 100Hz flicker you have problems with?
Al the TL (tube lights) and Sodium pressure lamps on conventional ballasts were 100Hz (120Hz in US) and no-one complained about them till they were EOL.
At that point the cathodes of the Sodium lamps and the filaments of the TLs are worn and you get sub-100Hz flicker which indeed is very annoying.

Modern electronic drivers use around 400Hz frequency AFAIK.

I don't claim to be able to tell the precise frequency just by looking at it, but I can absolutely see the flicker even with a fairly new lamp. Actually 100Hz stands out quite a bit more as it's not what I'm used to. When I visited the UK I found the lower frequency to be quite prominently visible in all types of discharge lamps. After I'd been there a few days it was less noticeable but the first night it was like whoa, flickery! The brain is able to tune it out to some degree, but when it's suddenly a different frequency than you've seen your whole life it's very visible. Lighting is something that has been a strong interest of mine my whole life so lights are something I've always paid attention to wherever I am.

[james_s]

Agreed, I also had some questionmarks about him asking professional work related questions on a public forum.
Sometimes it might be ok'ish esp. when you don't have colleagues with the same line of work and you like a 2nd opinion.
Since the information is retained "for ever" it could become an issue in the future.  When I was a student in 1996 I asked a question online in a electronics newsgroup, you can still find it under my name, that is quite weird.

It's one thing to ask professional related questions in a forum, it's quite another to ask them at every turn, relying entirely on the forum in order to do one's job.

[Kjelt]

I don't claim to be able to tell the precise frequency just by looking at it, but I can absolutely see the flicker even with a fairly new lamp. Actually 100Hz stands out quite a bit more as it's not what I'm used to. When I visited the UK I found the lower frequency to be quite prominently visible in all types of discharge lamps. After I'd been there a few days it was less noticeable but the first night it was like whoa, flickery! The brain is able to tune it out to some degree, but when it's suddenly a different frequency than you've seen your whole life it's very visible. Lighting is something that has been a strong interest of mine my whole life so lights are something I've always paid attention to wherever I am.

Oh I am sure that a small part of people are more susceptible to the frequency as others.
For instance with DLP projectors the images are seperated in different primary colors and projected sequentially over a mirror device and a rotating colorwheel.
Some people don't see it while others go crazy with headaches.
All I am saying is that with fluo which was developed before WW2 there were relatively little complaints, whole generations grew up with them in schools and workplaces.
It helps that the plasma and phosphors kind of buffer the lightstream so the flicker is medium to low compared to Leds that are notorioys for fast on/off response.
So yes best is to dim leds with current and not pwm also for emc purposes.

It's one thing to ask professional related questions in a forum, it's quite another to ask them at every turn, relying entirely on the forum in order to do one's job.

I agree. I initially thought that Treez was a beginner but reading previous posts from other users and seeing in his profile he is 39 that sheds a different light on the matter.

[tggzzz]

hat raises a generic question that treez might like to ponder....
There are two approaches to a career:

• be a jack-of-all-trades and master of none
• be a world expert on some topic

The former has the virtue that it tends to protect from the worst changes in the job market - but you are more expendable/replaceable.
The latter has the virtue that employers know you are unreplacable and valuable - but only while that topic is of interest to employers.

Either choice is valid and down to personal preference - but one way or another a choice will be made!

I wonder if this is still valid for electronics / software / any tech job.
To become a master in any of these fields in a company in this day of age you have to look ahead and learn yourself topics that are not so hot but are becoming hot. And have the ability to pick the right ones from the ones that never get the attention. You have to have the knowledge and experience just before companies are getting interested, in the meanwhile performing top notch in your current role.
That is not so easy anymore. I sometimes say to my partner who is a college educated nurse on a cardiac department, that if the human heart (body) would change as fast as the electronics/software field you had to re-study the total anatomy since you would have an alien body instead of a known human body.

It was never easy, always required work at home, and was always risky!

It is always necessary to be able to discern the frothy changes from the fundamental changes. Hence I ignored froth such as Delphi, Modula, C#, and web GUI frameworks. Concentrating on C, Smalltalk and Objective-C and then Java (and understanding first-order predicate logic and FSMs) was a good set of choices!

[james_s]

Oh I am sure that a small part of people are more susceptible to the frequency as others.
For instance with DLP projectors the images are seperated in different primary colors and projected sequentially over a mirror device and a rotating colorwheel.
Some people don't see it while others go crazy with headaches.
All I am saying is that with fluo which was developed before WW2 there were relatively little complaints, whole generations grew up with them in schools and workplaces.
It helps that the plasma and phosphors kind of buffer the lightstream so the flicker is medium to low compared to Leds that are notorioys for fast on/off response.
So yes best is to dim leds with current and not pwm also for emc purposes.

I don't find the flicker of fluorescents to be objectionable in most cases, it's subtle but I can certainly tell that it's there. I think the persistence of the phosphor softens the edges and the light doesn't drop all the way to zero. Flickering LED lamps I find extremely annoying though, I've never tried one on a 50Hz supply but even on 60Hz the flicker is very visible and distracting.

[IanB]

Actually 100Hz stands out quite a bit more as it's not what I'm used to. When I visited the UK...

Does that also apply to sound frequencies? For instance, if you are in the UK does the transformer hum stand out as being different from the USA?

[IanB]

I initially thought that Treez was a beginner but reading previous posts from other users and seeing in his profile he is 39 that sheds a different light on the matter.

Maybe Treez has been a beginner for 20-odd years? He certainly has had a lot of practice at it...

[james_s]

Actually 100Hz stands out quite a bit more as it's not what I'm used to. When I visited the UK...

Does that also apply to sound frequencies? For instance, if you are in the UK does the transformer hum stand out as being different from the USA?

Yes, that also jumped out at me, transformers, refrigerators, all that sort of stuff sounded weird. My friend who lives over there has said the same thing about visiting the US, for the first day or two electrical equipment sounds weird, but then you adjust and it's not as noticeable. A bit like if you sit in a room lit by colored light after a while it starts to look white.

[tggzzz]

I initially thought that Treez was a beginner but reading previous posts from other users and seeing in his profile he is 39 that sheds a different light on the matter.

Maybe Treez has been a beginner for 20-odd years? He certainly has had a lot of practice at it...

There's the old point about there being a difference between 20 years of experience, and 1 year of experience repeated 20 times.

[tooki]

Actually 100Hz stands out quite a bit more as it's not what I'm used to. When I visited the UK...

Does that also apply to sound frequencies? For instance, if you are in the UK does the transformer hum stand out as being different from the USA?

I can’t say that I noticed that when moving from USA to Europe. But what I definitely notice is content shot on film at 24fps is sped up to 25fps for PAL - I hear the 4% speedup. (Mercifully, with modern digital distribution, both disc and streaming, this is finally going the way of the dodo.)