Author Topic: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.  (Read 9617 times)

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Online NiHaoMike

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #50 on: August 08, 2023, 05:00:36 am »
Wouldn't the easy way be to just buy dimmable LEDs which are much brighter than you need and just don't use them at full power?
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Offline gnuarm

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #51 on: August 08, 2023, 05:18:28 am »
Wouldn't the easy way be to just buy dimmable LEDs which are much brighter than you need and just don't use them at full power?

1) There's no such thing as dimmable LEDs, just like CFLs.  The controllers chop the AC waveform which doesn't work very well with these devices, even when they claim to be compatible, even when you combine specific model numbers that are claimed to be compatible. 

2) LED brightness is controlled by current, not voltage.  There's simply no practical way to make this work well, that doesn't burn excess power.
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Offline AVGresponding

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #52 on: August 08, 2023, 05:21:50 am »
Wouldn't the easy way be to just buy dimmable LEDs which are much brighter than you need and just don't use them at full power?

1) There's no such thing as dimmable LEDs, just like CFLs.  The controllers chop the AC waveform which doesn't work very well with these devices, even when they claim to be compatible, even when you combine specific model numbers that are claimed to be compatible. 

2) LED brightness is controlled by current, not voltage.  There's simply no practical way to make this work well, that doesn't burn excess power.

Actually it's a long established method to control LED "brightness"; effectively a PWM controller, and LEDs are always rated by both continuous and pulsed current.
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Offline gnuarm

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #53 on: August 08, 2023, 05:42:37 am »
Wouldn't the easy way be to just buy dimmable LEDs which are much brighter than you need and just don't use them at full power?

1) There's no such thing as dimmable LEDs, just like CFLs.  The controllers chop the AC waveform which doesn't work very well with these devices, even when they claim to be compatible, even when you combine specific model numbers that are claimed to be compatible. 

2) LED brightness is controlled by current, not voltage.  There's simply no practical way to make this work well, that doesn't burn excess power.

Actually it's a long established method to control LED "brightness"; effectively a PWM controller, and LEDs are always rated by both continuous and pulsed current.

How do you manage that from the wall control? 
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Online Marco

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #54 on: August 08, 2023, 06:53:36 am »
1) There's no such thing as dimmable LEDs, just like CFLs.  The controllers chop the AC waveform which doesn't work very well with these devices, even when they claim to be compatible, even when you combine specific model numbers that are claimed to be compatible. 
You can always buck boost. Also you can just say the lamp only works with trailing edge dimmers with adjustment pot and turn off at 90 degrees and let the customer figure it out. Full voltage always available after the rectifier, problem solved.
 
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Offline tom66

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #55 on: August 08, 2023, 07:23:15 am »
Wouldn't the easy way be to just buy dimmable LEDs which are much brighter than you need and just don't use them at full power?

1) There's no such thing as dimmable LEDs, just like CFLs.  The controllers chop the AC waveform which doesn't work very well with these devices, even when they claim to be compatible, even when you combine specific model numbers that are claimed to be compatible. 

2) LED brightness is controlled by current, not voltage.  There's simply no practical way to make this work well, that doesn't burn excess power.

What?  The majority of dimmable LED bulbs just follow the chopped mains voltage with a constant current LED driver.  So the LED gets the chopped AC input, full-wave rectified to DC.  This means they're a lot more sensitive to variations in mains voltage, unlike a filament bulb there's no inertia to speak of, so I haven't the greatest opinion of them.  But they are dimmable, and they don't burn excess power when dim.
 

Offline gnuarm

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #56 on: August 08, 2023, 08:05:52 am »
1) There's no such thing as dimmable LEDs, just like CFLs.  The controllers chop the AC waveform which doesn't work very well with these devices, even when they claim to be compatible, even when you combine specific model numbers that are claimed to be compatible. 
You can always buck boost. Also you can just say the lamp only works with trailing edge dimmers with adjustment pot and turn off at 90 degrees and let the customer figure it out. Full voltage always available after the rectifier, problem solved.

You really don't know anything about these devices, do you? 
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Online Marco

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #57 on: August 08, 2023, 11:13:27 am »
They just convert conduction angle to PWM, it works fine. The only problem with LED dimming is that you don't have full voltage to work with after the rectifier with less than 90 degree conduction angle, which is a pain for the switching regulator. With extreme cost cutting some of the lower end manufacturers cut corners. Even then, with a modern trailing edge dimmer you can adjust minimum conduction angle, so if the bulb starts flickering just don't let it dim that far back.

If it absolutely has to work with any old dimmer in the wall and you absolutely want the same dimming range with the same range of the knob and otherwise say dimming doesn't work, then dimming doesn't work.

PS. The power supply for a trailing edge dimmer itself isn't entirely trivial either with two wires, needs to bootstrap somehow, meh it works well enough.
« Last Edit: August 08, 2023, 11:53:54 am by Marco »
 

Offline gnuarm

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #58 on: August 08, 2023, 05:57:44 pm »
They just convert conduction angle to PWM, it works fine.

Except that they don't "works fine". 


Quote
The only problem with LED dimming is...

So you do know that it doesn't "works fine"! 

I bought LED ceiling fixtures (with the LEDs inside) and the dimmer specified on the box.  They have issues working together.  It was hard, but I finally was able to reach the manufactures.  Each one told me to return them.  They had no solution to the problem.  They didn't care that they didn't work.  Their solution was simply to return the junk where I bought them. 

That's not "works fine". 
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Offline Kjelt

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #59 on: August 08, 2023, 06:43:49 pm »
Indeed ac dimming is and has always been a PITA for led lighting.
The good dimming drivers use DALI , 0-10V or nowadays wireless communication as Zigbee and BT as dimming input.
 

Online Marco

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #60 on: August 08, 2023, 06:56:04 pm »
Except that they don't "works fine".
Works on my machine (or rather kitchen ceiling lights).
Quote
I bought LED ceiling fixtures (with the LEDs inside) and the dimmer specified on the box.  They have issues working together.  It was hard, but I finally was able to reach the manufactures.  Each one told me to return them.  They had no solution to the problem.  They didn't care that they didn't work.  Their solution was simply to return the junk where I bought them. 
Caveat emptor. We have a couple online shops selling cheap self branded cheap LED bulbs together with self branded dimmers. I bought GU10s from one of those, a one stop shop is useful, with EU online purchasing laws they are incentivized to make it work. I won't get the best lumen per watt or longevity most likely, but it just werks. GU10 sucks for longevity, but retrofits are a compromise.

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple jumps in and just start selling their own bulbs and dimmers ... and it will just werk as well (at 10 times the cost).
« Last Edit: August 08, 2023, 06:57:59 pm by Marco »
 

Online Marco

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #61 on: August 08, 2023, 07:06:33 pm »
Indeed ac dimming is and has always been a PITA for led lighting.

Trailing edge dimmers were such a wasted opportunity. They should have made it an industry standard "for trailing edge, 90 degrees conduction angle is minimum brightness". Expensive dimmable lamps could have been made compatible with all dimmers, cheap ones would have been trailing edge only and still always have full mains voltage behind the rectifier.
 

Offline themadhippy

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #62 on: August 08, 2023, 07:12:23 pm »
Quote
The only problem with LED dimming is

lack of thermal inertia so instead of a gentle  fade out ,the dam things snap off at some point
 

Offline Microdoser

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #63 on: August 08, 2023, 09:15:02 pm »
I have no problem dimming my LED lights (to a point, any LED light has a minimum working voltage, like a diode funnilly enough).
 
I just use a current limiting power supply and limit the current to them, I can easily get their power usage down to 15% of the rated value with no discernable flicker (much less than that if you don't mind flickery lights)
 
Of course, this is only a solution for people who know the right end of a soldering iron to use. It seems that is not everyone here...
 

Online Marco

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #64 on: August 08, 2023, 09:47:48 pm »
The problem is ripping up the walls and ceiling, not the soldering.
 
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Online NiHaoMike

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #65 on: August 08, 2023, 11:04:33 pm »
Apart from the LED lights dimmable using a dimmer, there are also ones dimmable by remote controls and ones dimmable by IoT. The IoT ones have their own problems, of course, but many of them can be solved with Tasmota. https://templates.blakadder.com/light.html
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Offline tautech

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #66 on: August 12, 2023, 05:10:51 am »
Earlier I reported being gifted 2 faulty fixtures and that their drivers could be configured for output current so I grabbed the resistor config table from the datasheet, as attached.

Recently we needed to replace a 30+ yr old 60" single fluorescent as its end caps would no longer make reliable contact with the tube pins.  :horse:
Its replacement was a very similar fixure but configurable LED with 2 brightness settings and 3 white settings with a 3 position sliding switch.
After some weeks mucking with it to find good for us settings the medium white, 4000k IIRC and 30 instead of 50W were selected.

One asks oneself why all these adjustable setting were added to a relatively cheap fitting......so it could be configured for an extended lifetime ? Of that we will see.
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Offline jonovid

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #67 on: August 12, 2023, 05:57:35 am »
running at a reduced voltage can help, 10 or 11 volts on a lighting strip not 12.
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Online PsiTopic starter

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #68 on: August 12, 2023, 06:08:37 am »
running at a reduced voltage can help, 10 or 11 volts on a lighting strip not 12.

Yep, it helps a lot. Due to the temp vs longevity curve for most components.
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Offline gnuarm

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #69 on: August 12, 2023, 06:35:35 am »
running at a reduced voltage can help, 10 or 11 volts on a lighting strip not 12.

You mean a lighting strip that uses fixed resistors to limit the current, with no electronics to control the current? 
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Offline Zero999

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #70 on: August 12, 2023, 10:02:57 am »
I'm generally against regulation, but I do support legislation to for a minimum warranty of five years on LED lamps, to cut down on waste. This is easy to do, but most people don't keep receipts and wouldn't bother with warranty claims.

Another option is to have a deposit system, when the customer can return their dead lamp to where they purchased it from, in exchange for a small sum of money. It would make the lamps more expensive, but it will give manufactures more of an incentive to make them last longer. This would probably be more effective, than the first option, but come at greater cost.
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #71 on: August 12, 2023, 10:07:45 am »
One asks oneself why all these adjustable setting were added to a relatively cheap fitting......

Perhaps so that the user can "find good for us settings" such as  "the medium white, 4000k IIRC and 30 instead of 50W"?

I'd call that a plus, but whatever rocks your boat  :-//
 

Offline gnuarm

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #72 on: August 12, 2023, 10:17:19 am »
I'm generally against regulation, but I do support legislation to for a minimum warranty of five years on LED lamps, to cut down on waste. This is easy to do, but most people don't keep receipts and wouldn't bother with warranty claims.

Another option is to have a deposit system, when the customer can return their dead lamp to where they purchased it from, in exchange for a small sum of money. It would make the lamps more expensive, but it will give manufactures more of an incentive to make them last longer. This would probably be more effective, than the first option, but come at greater cost.

LOL!!!  Both of these ideas are totally impractical.  The warranty is of no use at all, because very few hang onto receipts which will be required for warranty returns.  The deposit has no advantage at all.  It has no impact on the bulb maker.  It's just a hassle for the retailer.
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Online PsiTopic starter

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #73 on: August 12, 2023, 10:33:48 am »
The warranty is of no use at all, because very few hang onto receipts which will be required for warranty returns. 

Depends, some places only require receipts for cash refunds.  But if it's a faulty product and you just want to swap it for a good one it's fine without a receipt.

« Last Edit: August 12, 2023, 10:35:26 am by Psi »
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Offline tom66

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Re: LED lighting and planned obsolescence, intentional or not.
« Reply #74 on: August 12, 2023, 10:57:07 am »
I'm generally against regulation, but I do support legislation to for a minimum warranty of five years on LED lamps, to cut down on waste. This is easy to do, but most people don't keep receipts and wouldn't bother with warranty claims.

Another option is to have a deposit system, when the customer can return their dead lamp to where they purchased it from, in exchange for a small sum of money. It would make the lamps more expensive, but it will give manufactures more of an incentive to make them last longer. This would probably be more effective, than the first option, but come at greater cost.

I'd like to see it extended to most consumer goods too, obvious exceptions for consumables and physical damage but TV's, appliances, phones etc should be warrantied for 5 years minimum.
 


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