Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[Leeima]

I don't know for sure. All I know is that all LED lights currently are too intense for me and eventually cause eye strain. Warm white LED still does it but I need to have the diffuser within eyesight. I can have a 13w warm white LED light in the other room from me and if the diffuser is within eyesight I get eye strain and migraines. It could be that the light is just too damn bright.

With cool white LED all I need is a reflection from a wall for it to cause eyestrain/migraine, even with a puny little 5 watt bulb, if the light is flooding the room I have to turn it off within about 20 mins or it triggers a migraine/eye strain.

I can view my laptop's screen just fine for several hours a day without issues but it does have the lowest lumen output of any laptop out there, HP Victus, but once a cool white LED is introduced into the room that then triggers a migraine which lasts for 6 hours. Yet I'm looking at LED lights directly in front of me from the LED backlit screen on my computer!?!?

I think the issue could be that cool white or neutral white LED produces high intensity light within a small area. warm white to me is also intense and confined to a small area but less so. Which leads me to believe that it might be a combination of both the amount of blue light that LED produces AND the intensity of the light.

I'm 100% fine and used to fluorescent which produces a light that is uniform and spread across a large surface area along the surface of a bulb. It could be that the problem is coming down to intensity and needing more surface area. It could also be that I simply need to dim a LED light down to the levels that a fluorescent light would produce in the same amount of surface area. If thats the case then that means that if I was put into a normal work environment that the LED lights would be too strong for me and I would have to wear shades.........

My main room light is a 8w Philips Tornado CFL in warm white, I have no issues with it and it fills the room just fine, can use that for ages with no issues. Soon as  I plug in a cool white LED 5w into the same lamp on the same table in the same room, boom, migraines, even from just the secondary dimmed reflections from the walls. THAT makes me think that its blue light thats causing the problems.

It might also be that light travels in straight lines and is acting to me like a laser beam of sorts, all it takes then is a single point of reflection for it to cause troubles, even if my entire field of vision otherwise is coming from non reflective surfaces. All it takes is a single shiny metal object in the room for the light to come into my retina and start to cause pain.

Who knows for sure.

Maybe your lights are flickering? are these PWM'd or constant current do you know? (aiming a camera at it might show you). But I agree, a few of the office gadgets had blinding blue on lights on them, so i stuck some kapton tape over them to dim them.

[TimFox]

One way to increase the apparent size of a small-extent light source is a diffuser, such as ground glass or similar plastic sheets.
A listing:  https://www.edmundoptics.com/c/optical-diffusers/731/#
Have you tried anything like this to reduce your eye strain?

[Bud]

Yes I think you are on the right track.

And I think I may have figured out my problem.

LED lights in Cool white, that is 6500k or thereabouts, are too bright/intense. But warm white LEDs are ok and I tolerate them just fine. Provided I don't buy something that is too high powered.

Holy cheese, I would suggest dropping it right away to 4K and after adapting to it drop to 3K. And i do not know your habbits but one should take walks outside during daytime as well. We do not typically appreciate that natural daylight affects our health.

[helius]

White LEDs are mostly blue LEDs exciting a phosphor that produces the other colors to make light that appears white (but does not have the same spectrum as white light from an incandescent source such as the sun). Because blue light has physiological effects from its interaction with the sleep-wake cycle, the massive use of LED lighting can be regarded as a medical experiment.

[james_s]

My grandmother told me to "always keep your hand in" which meant that you should always keep busy right up until you can't physically do it anymore due to old age preventing you. She's now in a nursing home and hates it there, well that would be putting it too bluntly, she is very bored there.

Mine said roughly the same, and she did stay active. She was regularly out on her riding mower cutting the grass at 98 and always walked down the ~1/4 mile driveway to get the newspaper until the last week or so of her life. Use it or lose it.

[Bud]

. She was regularly out on her riding mower cutting the grass at 98

[pcprogrammer]

... I know we’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, ....

I have always found that to be so stupid. If someone was a bastard during his life, why hide it when he is dead. The fact that he died does not change how he was.

The biggest criminal, but at his funeral, "It was such a good person." Yeah right. 

[PlainName]

Perhaps because it is surely better to remember good things than bad things.

[Nominal Animal]

In the Sci-Fi novel Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card describes one solution to the dilemma: someone to thoroughly but honestly describe the reasons driving a person, why they were the way they were, to bring true closure via understanding to the family.

[PlainName]

Orson Scott Card describes one solution

That would be OK. It's important to remember that funerals and the like are not for the deceased but purely for those that remain.

[ebastler]

I'm 100% fine and used to fluorescent which produces a light that is uniform and spread across a large surface area along the surface of a bulb. It could be that the problem is coming down to intensity and needing more surface area. [...]

My main room light is a 8w Philips Tornado CFL in warm white, I have no issues with it and it fills the room just fine, can use that for ages with no issues. Soon as  I plug in a cool white LED 5w into the same lamp on the same table in the same room, boom, migraines, even from just the secondary dimmed reflections from the walls. THAT makes me think that its blue light thats causing the problems.

The fact that fluorescent is by design a very very diffuse light source and spread across a very large surface area, basically the entire length of the bulb, could mean that its the combination of reflective surfaces and concentrated light sources from a small area, eg the diffuser on a regular LED GLS bulb, and the high concentration of blue light. But that still doesn't explain why I get eye strain from beige coloured walls reflecting cool white LED.

I don't see why an LED "bulb" would have a significantly higher emission per surface area than a fluorescent one. The scattering/diffusing surface area of an LED GLS bulb is not significantly smaller than the one of a CFL spiral.

It seems likely to me that the "cold" 6500K spectrum plays a role in your response to the LED bulbs you tried. Maybe coupled with a psychological effect, getting tense because you expect problems, which might make this a self-fulfilling prophecy?

If you prefer even illumination emanating from a large surface area, have you heard of lamp shades? 

[ebastler]

I have a lamp shade only problem is the half illuminated LED GLS bulbs shoot most if not all of the light up onto the roof instead of out to the sides so the lamp shade doesn't glow and further diffuse the light.

I was thinking of lamp shades made of translucent glass, plastics or paper, which are in the line of sight between your eye and the light bulb.

Also, for workplace illumination: Have you looked into the LED tubes which replace the large T5 and T8 fluorescent tubes? They should nicely meet your "large emission surface" requirement, and are an easy retrofit to the low-cost lighting fixtures you can get (or already have) for the T5 and T8 tubes. And in contrast to the original fluorescent tubes, the LED types light up immediately without blinking.

[SilverSolder]

I have a lamp shade only problem is the half illuminated LED GLS bulbs shoot most if not all of the light up onto the roof instead of out to the sides so the lamp shade doesn't glow and further diffuse the light.

And the "other" type of LED bulb the ones with fake filaments don't help the cause for LED either because they last such a short period of time due to the lack of any heatsinking whatsoever.

LED is a failed product. You lose a led driver in an entire baton thats no big issue but it still affects the overall brightness of the device but you quickly lose half of them in some of the LED devices and you end up just shifting shit products onto the market especially in an economy where people mostly buy the cheapest nastiest stuff they can find, combine that with the fact that manufacturers drive the hell out of most LEDs however and you get premature failure of most LED light fittings. Or did everybody forget this when they all went gun-ho and bought up LED? Did drivers and LED life expectancy improve while I was stuck under a rock? I can't imagine any LED light surviving 50,000 hours however even if they did improve the reliability of them, which is what makes me weary of using them that and the migraines.

I dunno LED smells too much like a con to me. It seems to me like people are just buying it because its new and trendy and the companies making them con everyone into believing that they'll last forever and ever and ever and that they pull such little power from the wall, oooh woooow, gee whizz!

Half the time I think people actually like change for changes skake. Because it makes them feel better. But you still have the problems of ballasts and electronics as you did have with CFL. You still have the problem of early failures with LED. And there is the elephant in the room the fact that LED produces blue light then converts it into other colours using phosphors.

I would rather stick to fluorescent, its tested its mature tech its reliable and if a bulb goes you can swap it out easily for hardly any cost. If you were to hold LED lights up to the same standards of light quality as you get from Fluorescent you would go broke replacing entire LED fixtures just to make sure that they all produced the same light output and all still worked because you have to replace the entire fixture most times with LED, unless you use strictly T5 and T8 retrofits.

Doing all of the numbers just doesn't add up. People who own teslas know what I mean, ever priced an entire LED fixture just because of shitty design?

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/daytime-running-lights-drl-issues-what-options-do-we-have-in-nz.234560/

As an experiment, I replaced some of the regular incandescent bulbs in a long bathroom fixture (with 12 bulbs).  I literally cannot tell the difference between the colour and brightness of the LED vs. the incandescent bulbs from any angle in the room -  I was both surprised and impressed.  These LED bulbs look and work like normal bulbs, except the bottom inch or so is stuffed with electronics.  I think one of those would work with the kind of lamp shade you talk about?

Where LED fails for me is when used on a dimmer...  the colour doesn't change correctly when dimmed.

The light bulb industry has been a scam since forever (one of the first ever industrial cartels, agreeing among themselves to not make bulbs last too long).  Of course these days, making things not last too long is par for the course in every industry.  Burn the planet down for short term profits, is what these clowns are all about.  Another pet peeve of mine!

[TimFox]

You seem to confuse "brightness" with "color" for artificial light sources.
My guess is that your problem has to do with color (especially the blue part of the spectrum) rather than brightness or intensity.

[paulca]

Get your self a smart bulb.  Not an RGB one.  Just a white one that has color temp and brightness controls.

I find them very, very useful.  For example I have them setup, such that during the evenings they come on rapidly to about 50% brightness.  However, after midnight, they come on slowly over 5 seconds to 25% brightness and max warmth.

You can imagine how pleasant this is when both the upstairs hallway and the bathroom lights are configured like that.  No longer do  you have to be blinded when you hit the bathroom switch!

The slightly annoying thing is, I went a little futher and made the lights, if forced on during the day to be 100% bright cold white.  If you need the light during daylight it's for something that needs a lot of light.

However I used the solar panel out put being under 0.1W as my "night time" trigger... and I didn't add any histeresis. So, anytime I have the office light on during the dawn or dust hours the constantly gets brighter, dimmer, warmer colder.  Reminding me how lazy a hobby programmer I am.

[Zeyneb]

Perhaps because it is surely better to remember good things than bad things.

When your father is a bastard psychopath all you have of memories in your past is bad things. Then society has built up a rule whereby if you disagree and do not trust or listen to your father in any way you are further punished again by society, by your friends, family, neighbours, anyone who knows only half of the story and immediatley disagrees with your series of events in some way or just disagrees with you because of something that you've done while going through the emotional turmoil and destroyed life that your father has left you.

Its pure horror material and it happens all of the time.

This exactly happened to me.

EDIT: It's better to not have contact with family members than constantly getting those unmistakable signs they want to blame you for it.

[james_s]

Get your self a smart bulb.  Not an RGB one.  Just a white one that has color temp and brightness controls.

I find them very, very useful.  For example I have them setup, such that during the evenings they come on rapidly to about 50% brightness.  However, after midnight, they come on slowly over 5 seconds to 25% brightness and max warmth.

You can imagine how pleasant this is when both the upstairs hallway and the bathroom lights are configured like that.  No longer do  you have to be blinded when you hit the bathroom switch!

The slightly annoying thing is, I went a little futher and made the lights, if forced on during the day to be 100% bright cold white.  If you need the light during daylight it's for something that needs a lot of light.

However I used the solar panel out put being under 0.1W as my "night time" trigger... and I didn't add any histeresis. So, anytime I have the office light on during the dawn or dust hours the constantly gets brighter, dimmer, warmer colder.  Reminding me how lazy a hobby programmer I am.

I have quite a few of them now, I find the Philips Hue bulbs to be the best. They have white, variable CCT white and RGB full color versions. Unfortunately they do flicker at the 1kHz PWM frequency whch took getting used to.  I mostly don't notice it anymore but if I move my eyes with the lamp in view I see the flicker.

[CatalinaWOW]

Perhaps because it is surely better to remember good things than bad things.

When your father is a bastard psychopath all you have of memories in your past is bad things. Then society has built up a rule whereby if you disagree and do not trust or listen to your father in any way you are further punished again by society, by your friends, family, neighbours, anyone who knows only half of the story and immediatley disagrees with your series of events in some way or just disagrees with you because of something that you've done while going through the emotional turmoil and destroyed life that your father has left you.

Its pure horror material and it happens all of the time.

The rules for corner cases should always be different than what is right for the bulk of the population.  Unfortunately there seems to be a trend now to force the corner case rules on everyone.  Somehow concluding that a modest harm to a huge number of people is better than a larger harm to a small group. 

If we were really wise we could arrange solutions that harm no one.

[SiliconWizard]

If we were really wise we could arrange solutions that harm no one.

Oh we could. But we probably won't. Problem is that many deciders (political leaders) have perverse tendencies (often through narcissism), and rejoice in the idea of harming others in some way.
It's rather well known and you'll find a lot of studies about that. One paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279839204_Narcissism_And_Leadership_A_Review_And_Research_Agenda
(just in case some would think I'm just taking this out of my arse.)

[IDEngineer]

"Somehow concluding that a modest harm to a huge number of people is better than a larger harm to a small group."

That's like somehow concluding that if one person has cancer, it's better if more people have it.

The goal should be to *minimize* the number of people affected. Simple chance says that some ills will befall some people, even through no fault of their own. We should seek to prevent that from spreading, not artificially penalize the otherwise unaffected.

[jonovid]

Right now it seems like the whole world is going psychotic and preparing for war.

I don't see a solution occuring anytime soon either.

the best conspiracy theories are true, it takes time to realize war , peace & politics is sometimes planned years in advance.
even ET has its finger in the pie that is the world economic forum, believe it or not.

[SiliconWizard]

Speaking of the WEF, this year they've had a bunch of billionaires saying that capitalism is bad. This is getting fun.

[pcprogrammer]

Speaking of the WEF, this year they've had a bunch of billionaires saying that capitalism is bad. This is getting fun.

The day these billionaires start spreading their wealth, I will start believing them 

[Ed.Kloonk]

We have had Bill Gates in Sydney. Somebody tweeted a picture of his parked plane.

I thought what I'm sure Bill has heard many times..

"I thought it would have been bigger."

[IDEngineer]

I remember way back in the 90s there was a fair bit of fanfare that his personal car was a modest Volvo.

Yes, but meanwhile he was lobbying the US Congress to pass the 25 year and "Show and Display" rules so he could get his imported Porsche out of quarantine. Gates is basically personally responsible for our ability to import otherwise non-US-marketed vehicles. The EPA and NHTSB are hyper-sticklers about non-US-marketed cars, even if those cars are identical to those sent to other countries (example: Canada). Spare some thanks to Gates and his resources for making some of those vehicles kinda accessible to the "free" citizens of this country.